August Hermann Francke

August Hermann Francke was a young professor at Halle when he put a poor-box in his parsonage and, one day in 1695, found enough money in it to start a school for poor children. What grew from that is still standing: an orphanage, free schools, a teacher-training program, a pharmacy whose profits funded the rest, a bookshop and a printing house — an entire quarter of Halle given over to charity and education.

The Canstein Bible Institute, founded under his wing, kept type standing so Bibles could be printed continuously and sold at a price a working family could pay; it turned out them by the hundreds of thousands. Halle-trained men became the first Protestant missionaries to India when Ziegenbalg and Plutschau sailed for Tranquebar in 1706. Francke funded all of it by asking God rather than donors and keeping written accounts of what came in — a practice George Muller later read about and deliberately copied in Bristol.