Female philanthropy was at the heart of transformative thinking about society in the interwar period. In Britain, in the aftermath of the First World War, professionalization: the authority of the social sciences, mass democracy, internationalism and media sounded the future and the death knell of elite practices of benevolence. Female philanthropists reshaped personal models of charity into modern projects of social connectedness, and new forms of cultural and political encounter. The author connects the stories of four women: Evangeline Booth, Lettice Fisher, Emily Kinnaird and Muriel Paget.