Today in our History February 6, 1867 - The Peabody Fund was established.

GM – LIF – Today’s American Champion event, the first meeting of the nation’s first foundation was called to order. One hundred fifty-three years later, its legacy remains embedded in American philanthropy.

The Peabody Fund was established. The Peabody Fund provided monies for construction, endowments, scholarships, teacher and industrial education for newly freed slaves.

Reminder – “Prime Minister William Gladstone, taught men how to use money and how not to be its slave.” - George Peabody

Today in our History February 6, 1867 - The Peabody Fund was established.

It is considered by scholars to be one of the first truly modern philanthropies because of the way it went about giving its capital. The Peabody trustees devised a system of self-help by which the Foundation would provide challenge grants to local communities. Thus, the relatively meager return on the Fund's principal could be leveraged. Help would be targeted strategically. The Fund would seek locations where there were sufficient numbers of students and cooperative public officials who would combine the relatively small grant with tax money to build the school.

By the second decade of the Twentieth Century, a large number of southern communities had been able to build schools because of efforts by the Peabody Fund joined by others such as the Slater Fund, the Jeanes Fund, and the giant General Education Board, established by John D. Rockefeller, Sr. George Peabody was a prominent white-American international investor. He earned an estimated $12 million in his lifetime. He began his career as a stock boy and eventually settled in England.

George Peabody is considered to be the father of modern philanthropy. His aims were to improve society, promote education, and provide the poor with the means to help themselves.

The Peabody Education Fund, established with a $2 million gift from philanthropist George Peabody, was created for the purpose of encouraging education in the post-Civil War American south. During the fund’s existence, its trustees distributed more than $3.5 million in southern states. Liquidated in the 1890s, the majority of the fund was used to establish what is now Vanderbilt University’s George Peabody College for Teachers.

The indirect legacy of the Peabody Educational Fund is equally notable. The original Board of Trustees, selected by George Peabody himself, was comprised of Governors from the north and the south, marking one of the first collaborative efforts since the onset of the Civil War. The first educational philanthropy, the fund also served as a model for future efforts to improve education in America.

George Peabody was an American financier and philanthropist. He is widely regarded as the father of modern philanthropy.

Having no son of his own to whom he could pass on his business, Peabody took on Junius Spencer Morgan as a partner in 1854 and their joint business would go on to become J.P. Morgan & Co. after Peabody's 1864 retirement.

In his old age, Peabody won worldwide acclaim for his philanthropy. He founded the Peabody Trust in Britain and the Peabody Institute and George Peabody Library in Baltimore and was responsible for many other charitable initiatives. For his generosity, he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and made a Freeman of the City of London, among many other honors.

George Peabody is said to have influenced his friends, Johns Hopkins and Enoch Pratt, to establish the famed institutions still in existence that bear their respective names. Other American philanthropists through time, including Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Gates, have also cited Peabody and his model for charitable giving as inspiration for their own giving. George Peabody is considered to be the father of modern philanthropy. His aims were to improve society, promote education, and provide the poor with the means to help themselves.

The Peabody Education Fund organized to establish a permanent system of public education in the South and to enlarge the number of qualified teachers in the region. The Peabody Fund allocated millions of dollars in support of African American schools, as well as to support the growth of public schools for Blacks and Whites across the South. Research more about The Peabody Fund and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!