The long history of child sponsorship, c.1700–1950

Abstract

Abstract The invention of child sponsorship, a fundraising tool that raises billions of dollars a year for global projects, is widely credited to the Save the Children Fund in 1919. This article is the first to revise that history, as it follows sponsorship through multiple iterations across more than two centuries. Doing so, it uncovers sponsorship’s roots in transatlantic Protestant missionary networks that combined new theologies of child saving with early capitalism’s ‘share holding’ system. Turning to the early twentieth century, it then shows how sponsorship mobilized ‘non-sectarian’ Christianity to lend authority to humanitarian appeals while opening up broader markets.