Definition
In law, charity has two related but distinct meanings.
1. As an organization or institution: An entity established and operated for purposes recognized in law as charitable — typically the relief of poverty, the advancement of education, the promotion of religion, or other purposes beneficial to the community. Such entities qualify for special legal treatment, including exemption from taxation and the ability to receive tax-deductible contributions. Modern law in the United States follows a framework substantially shaped by the Elizabethan Statute of Charitable Uses (1601), which courts and legislatures have expanded over centuries to include scientific, artistic, and broadly public-benefit purposes.
2. As a gift, bequest, or trust: A transfer of property — by will, deed, or other instrument — made for charitable purposes rather than for private benefit. A charitable trust differs from a private trust in that it must benefit a sufficiently large and indefinite class of persons (the public, or a significant segment of it), must serve a recognized charitable purpose, and, in most jurisdictions, may have perpetual duration without violating the rule against perpetuities.
The defining characteristic across both meanings is the public benefit requirement: a purpose or gift is legally charitable only if it serves the community or an open class of beneficiaries, not merely private individuals.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Benevolence toward others less fortunate; goods or money given to those in need; an organization carrying out a charitable purpose; Christian love.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Love and universal benevolence; liberality in judging others; liberality to the poor and suffering; generosity toward worthy causes.
The common meaning of charity is narrow — it centers on almsgiving and kindness to the poor. The legal meaning is substantially broader. A gift to endow a university chair, fund scientific research, maintain a public park, or support a museum may qualify as a legal charity even if it provides no direct relief to the impoverished. Researchers working with historical sources should be alert to this gap: courts and commentators frequently observe that the legal sense of charity includes purposes the ordinary speaker would not recognize as charitable at all.
Common Confusion
Charity vs. philanthropy: In common usage these terms are often interchangeable. In legal analysis, philanthropy has no technical meaning; charity is the operative term of art. A gift described as "philanthropic" in lay correspondence may or may not satisfy the legal requirements for charitable status.
Charitable vs. benevolent: Historical sources — particularly trust instruments and wills — sometimes use "benevolent," "philanthropic," or "public-spirited" as apparent synonyms for "charitable." Courts have not always treated these as equivalent. A trust for "benevolent purposes" has in some jurisdictions been held to sweep beyond recognized charitable categories, rendering the trust invalid for excessive generality. Researchers reading historical instruments should flag these variant terms rather than assuming they carry the same legal freight.
Public charity vs. private charity: Older sources, including Rapalje & Lawrence, use "private charity" to describe gifts for private tombs or monuments. Modern law does not recognize private charity as a legal category — gifts to identifiable private individuals are simply gifts, not charities. The phrase has fallen out of technical use but appears in nineteenth-century sources and can mislead.
Core Elements
For a gift, trust, or institution to qualify as legally charitable, the following elements are generally required:
1. Charitable purpose: The purpose must fall within a recognized category. Common law categories, derived from the 1601 Statute of Charitable Uses, include relief of poverty, advancement of education, advancement of religion, and other purposes beneficial to the community. American courts and the Internal Revenue Code (§ 501(c)(3)) have operationalized and extended these categories.
2. Public benefit: The purpose must benefit the public or an indefinite class of persons, not a closed group of named individuals. A gift to "my poor relations" has historically occupied contested ground — some courts have upheld it as charitable; others have denied charitable status precisely because the class is defined by private relationship.
3. No private inurement: No part of the net earnings of a charitable organization may inure to the benefit of a private shareholder or individual.
4. Indefinite beneficiaries (for charitable trusts): The beneficiary class must be sufficiently open and large. A trust for three named individuals is a private trust; a trust for "the poor of the city" is charitable.
Why It Matters in Research
Several research traps cluster around this term.
Statutory layering: Modern charitable status in the United States is governed by a combination of state trust law, state nonprofit corporation law, and federal tax law (primarily I.R.C. § 501(c)(3)). These frameworks use the same word — charity — but apply different standards and produce different consequences. A researcher analyzing a charitable trust dispute must identify which body of law controls and resist importing tax-law definitions into trust-law analysis, or vice versa.
Historical expansion of the category: The recognized categories of charitable purpose have expanded significantly since the seventeenth century. Purposes that nineteenth-century courts rejected as insufficiently charitable — certain scientific, artistic, and advocacy purposes — may be recognized as charitable today. Historical sources are reliable guides to the law of their era, not necessarily to modern outcomes.
The "public benefit" variable: Courts have disagreed, sometimes sharply, about what satisfies the public benefit requirement. Religious organizations, organizations serving narrow but open classes, and organizations whose public benefit is indirect have all generated litigation. Black's Law Dictionary acknowledges the term's breadth without resolving these edge cases.
Jurisdictional divergence in England and America: English law has a more formalized framework for charity registration and oversight (the Charity Commission). American law delegates oversight primarily to state attorneys general. Historical English sources — which dominate the common-law commentary in the Law Mind corpus — may not map cleanly onto American doctrine.
Cy-près doctrine connection: When a charitable trust's specific purpose fails or becomes impractical, courts may apply cy-près to redirect the gift to a related charitable purpose. Research into charitable trust disputes will almost always require engagement with cy-près doctrine.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary draws the subjective/objective distinction cleanly: charity is both a sentiment (benevolence, philanthropy) and an act (alms, relief, service to the needy without expectation of return). It then explicitly notes that the legal meaning "is different from the signification which it ordinarily bears" — encompassing not only aid to the poor but endowments for learning, science, and art. This acknowledgment of the gap between common and legal meaning is one of the more useful editorial observations in the historical dictionaries.
Rapalje & Lawrence adds the significant point that charity in the proper legal sense must be public: gifts for private tombs or monuments are not charities however benevolent the intent. It provides a serviceable list of historically recognized charitable objects — relief of the aged, poor, and sick; relief of the donor's poor relations; education; repair of bridges. The inclusion of "poor relations" is worth noting; this category generated substantial litigation because the class, while technically open, is defined by private kinship.
Bouvier's cross-references to public charity and official trustees of charities without providing a substantive definition — researchers relying on Bouvier alone will need to supplement from Black's or Rapalje.
Anderson's Dictionary of Law entry surfaced in the source material relates to jury instructions rather than to charity and appears to be a corpus mismatch; it does not inform this entry.
The historical dictionaries collectively reflect a common-law framework derived from the 1601 Statute of Charitable Uses and the English equity courts' elaboration of it through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They are weakest on the organizational dimension of charity — the incorporated nonprofit — which is largely a product of twentieth-century statutory development and is not systematically addressed in any of the shelf sources.
Jurisdictional Note
In the United States, charitable status for tax purposes is governed federally by I.R.C. § 501(c)(3), but charitable trust law and nonprofit oversight remain primarily state matters. English common-law categories inform American doctrine but do not control it; several American states have adopted the Uniform Trust Code provisions on charitable trusts, while others retain common-law frameworks. Researchers working across jurisdictions should not assume that a purpose qualifying as charitable in one state will be recognized as such in another.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Charitable Trusts; Nonprofit Organizations and Tax-Exempt Status; Cy-Près Doctrine