A benefit society or mutual aid society is an organization or voluntary association formed to provide mutual aid, benefit or insurance for relief from sundry difficulties. Such organizations may be formally organized with charters and established customs, or may arise ad hoc to meet unique needs of a particular time and place.
Benefit societies can be organized around a shared ethnic background, religion, occupation, geographical region or other basis. Benefits may include money or assistance for sickness, retirement, education, birth of a baby, funeral and medical expenses, unemployment. Often benefit societies provide a social or educational framework for members and their families to support each other and contribute to the wider community.
Examples of benefit societies include trade unions, friendly societies, credit unions, self-help groups, landsmanshaftn, immigrant hometown societies, Fraternal organizations such as Freemasons and Oddfellows, coworking communities, and many others. Peter Kropotkin posited early in the 20th century that mutual aid affiliations predate human culture and are as much a factor in evolution as is survival of the fittest.
A benefit society can be characterized by
- members having equivalent opportunity for a say in the organization
- members having potentially equivalent benefits.
- aid would go to those in need (strong helping the weak)
- collection fund for payment of benefits
- educating others about a group's interest
- preserving cultural traditions
- mutual defence
Read more about Benefit Society: History of Benefit Societies, Current Benefit Societies, Selected Past and Present Benefit Societies
Famous quotes containing the words benefit society, benefit and/or society:
“... we’re not out to benefit society, to remold existence, to make industry safe for anyone except ourselves, to give any small peoples except ourselves their rights. We’re not out for submerged tenths, we’re not going to suffer over how the other half lives. We’re out for Mary’s job and Luella’s art, and Barbara’s independence and the rest of our individual careers and desires.”
—Anne O’Hagan (1869–?)
“You say that you do not succeed much. Does it concern you enough that you do not? Do you work hard enough at it? Do you get the benefit of discipline out of it? If so persevere. Is it a more serious thing than to walk a thousand miles in a thousand successive hours? Do you get any corns by it? Do you ever think of hanging yourself on account of failure?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The most remarkable aspect of the transition we are living through is not so much the passage from want to affluence as the passage from labor to leisure.... Leisure contains the future, it is the new horizon.... The prospect then is one of unremitting labor to bequeath to future generations a chance of founding a society of leisure that will overcome the demands and compulsions of productive labor so that time may be devoted to creative activities or simply to pleasure and happiness.”
—Henri Lefebvre (b. 1901)