In 1889, with Ellen Gates Starr, Jane Addams founded Hull House in Chicago, one of the nation’s first settlement houses. It served as a community center for learn more...

A life-changing experience led Edgar “Daddy” Allen to found an organization that became Easter Seals in 1919. From the construction of one hospital in Ohio learn more...

Dr. Ethel Percy Andrus saw value and worth where others may not have – in the older members of our society. She knew that older Americans could contribute learn more...

Blessed with an industrious and self-disciplined spirit, Susan B. Anthony persevered through the prejudice and culture of her time to emerge as the learn more...

Roger Nash Baldwin passionately believed in the protection of individual liberty. In 1920, Baldwin and his fellow reformers established the American Civil learn more...

Clara Barton lived a lifetime of tireless service to others. During the American Civil War, she became known as the “Angel of the Battlefield,” delivering learn more...

Clifford Beers is the founder of the modern day mental health movement. He established the International Committee for Mental Hygiene in 1931, known today learn more...

Ballington and Maud Booth founded Volunteers of America in 1986 with the mission to reach and uplift all people. The Booths envisioned a movement that would learn more...

William D. Boyce used his childhood experiences and his success as an international publisher and businessman to create the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). learn more...

Wallace Campbell, together with Lincoln Clark and Arthur Ringland, founded Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) in 1945 to rush learn more...

Rachel Carson’s philosophy of conservation and the desire for people to coexist peacefully with nature guided her contributions to the preservation of the learn more...

Led by his desire to secure a better quality of life for migrant farm workers, Cesar Chavez helped found the United Farm Workers for America (UFW), the learn more...

Ernest K. Coulter’s enduring contribution is the founding, in 1904, of the Big Brothers Big Sisters youth mentoring movement. Coulter lived a life of learn more...

Inspired by her social conscience, Dorothea Dix launched a self-financed career aimed at improving the lives of the mentally ill. Her mission to document learn more...

Famed orator and writer Frederick Douglass was also a key architect of the movement that ended slavery, the very institution into which he was born. Even learn more...

Millard and Linda Fuller founded Habitat for Humanity, a Christian organization with “open arms” to all who want to be involved, to build affordable houses learn more...

As founder and 37-year president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), Samuel Gompers is credited with winning unprecedented rights and protections for learn more...

Juliette Gordon Low founded Girl Scouts of the United States of America in 1912 for girls to develop and strengthen leadership skills; to provide support, learn more...

Luther and Charlotte Gulick founded Camp Fire in 1910 as America’s first nonsectarian, interracial organization for girls. Boys joined in 1975. The learn more...

William Edwin Hall served as the unpaid president of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America for nearly four decades. Through his leadership, it grew to become learn more...

Inspired by the simple idea of combining fellowship and service, Paul Harris pioneered the service club movement with the founding of Rotary International. learn more...

Edgar J. Helms founded Goodwill Industries in 1902 to help people with disabilities and disadvantages fully participate in society by expanding their learn more...

Believing in the power of cooperative altruism, Melvin Jones helped shape Lions Club International into the largest network of services clubs in the world. learn more...

A blind and deaf writer and activist, Helen Keller was the guiding force behind the American Foundation for the Blind. Keller devoted her life to expanding learn more...

When Eunice Kennedy Shriver founded Special Olympics in 1968, she envisioned a program of athletic competition for people with mental retardation that learn more...

In founding the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave momentum to the civil rights movement. Dr. King’s persistent learn more...

John Muir, a conservationist, preservationist, explorer, writer, inventor, farmer and naturalist is credited, along with Theodore Roosevelt, as being the learn more...

Mary White Ovington and William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) DuBois were the two principal founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored learn more...

United in their search for sobriety, Dr. Bob and Bill W. established Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935 allowing men and women to share with one another their learn more...

Harriet Tubman escaped a life of slavery only to return south, at her own peril, time and again, to lead more than 300 fugitive slaves through the learn more...

As an influential African-American, living in a time of escalating segregation, Booker T. Washington negotiated a course between accommodation and progress learn more...

Ida Wells-Barnett crusaded aggressively for civil rights her entire life and was unafraid to exercise those rights when custom ran contrary to the law. learn more...