Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / On October 18, 1982, the Ronald McDonald House of Indiana (RMHI) opened near downtown Indianapolis on the campus of Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI), located within walking distance of the prestigious Riley Children's Hospital. The Ronald McDonald House (RMH) concept represented an almost perfect intersection between philanthropy and families in need. Creating the RMHI offered the opportunity for individuals, corporations, and benevolent organizations to come together and build a "home-away-from-home" for the families of sick children. When the RMH idea arrived in Indianapolis in the late 1970s, a group of collaborators representing the McDonald's corporation and restaurant owners, Riley Hospital, IUPUI, and the Indianapolis community banded together to make it a reality. On October 18, 1982, after nearly three years planning, fundraising, and construction, the RMHI's advocates and their supporters celebrated the successful opening of Indiana's only RMH. After this momentous occasion, the RMHI's board of directors and their community and corporate partners worked throughout the 1980s and 1990s to sustain, operate, and expand the home they created for the families of seriously ill children receiving treatment at Riley.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The Charity Organization Society of Indianapolis experienced founding, maturing, and corporate phases between 1879 and 1922. Indianapolis provided the ideal setting for the organized charity movement to flourish. Men and women innovated to act on their civic ideal to make Indianapolis a desirable city. As charity leaders applied the new techniques of scientific philanthropy, they assembled data one case at a time and based solutions to social problems on reforming individuals. The COS enjoyed its peak influence and legitimacy between 1891 and 1911. The organization continually learned from its work and advised other charities in Indianapolis and the U.S. The connected men and women engaged in organized charity learned that it was not enough to reform every individual who came to them for help. Industrialization created new socioeconomic strata and new forms of dependence. As the COS evolved, it implemented more systemic solutions to combat illness, unemployment, and poverty. After 1911 the COS stagnated while Indianapolis diversified economically, culturally, ethnically, and socially. The COS failed to adapt to its rapidly changing environment; it could not withstand competition, internal upheaval, specialization, and professionalization. Its general mission, to aid anyone in need, became lost in the shadow of child saving. Mid-level businessmen, corporate entities, professional social workers, service club members, and ethnic and racial minorities all participated in philanthropy. The powerful cache of social capital enervated and the civic ideal took on different dimensions. In 1922 the COS merged with other agencies to form the Family Welfare Society. This dissertation contributes to the scholarship of charity organization societies and social welfare policy. The scientific philanthropy movement did not represent an enormous leap from neighborhood benevolence. COSs represented neither a sinister agenda nor the best system to eradicate poverty. Organized charity did not create a single response to poverty, but a series of incremental responses that evolved over more than four decades. The women of Indianapolis exhibited more agency in their charitable work than is commonly understood. Charitable actors worked to harness giving and volunteering, bring an end to misery, and make Indianapolis an ideal city.