Members came from a variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds including Macedonians, Slavs, and Albanians and represented the working class such as artisans, tradesmen, and craftsmen like stonemasons, cobblers, and tanners.
[3] Their activities grew to encompass the organization of processions, sponsoring festivities, distribution of money, food and clothing to poorer members, provision of dowries to daughters, burial of paupers, and the supervision of hospitals.
[5] After a process of secularization, charities lost their Christian identity and were absorbed into the Venetian structure of the state[6] that encompassed an exhibiting unity-order among the social classes of the republic.
[7] While Venice deleted the medieval ius commune from its hierarchy of the sources of law,[8] Grandi Scuole were divided into two opposite classes, and started to securitize their immobiliar investments[clarification needed] under the central direction of private banks,[6] even if within the bounds of their history redistribution rules.
[clarification needed] The Poverty Laws approved in 1528–1529 entrusted from the state to the Grandi Scuole system all charitable and social activities, like handouts, drugs, burials of needy persons, hospices for widows and children, food and lodging for pilgrims, brotherhood for prisoners.