This article explores the relationship between philanthropy and education in the context of eighteenth-century Protestant Dissent. More particularly, it examines the intersection between philanthropy, fund-raising and educational administration as they evolved within the institutional lifecycle of the collegiate Dissenting academies. It argues that individual academies experienced at least three of four life stages, each of which had its own unique challenges. All academies went through the first two of these stages, namely "foundation" and "maintenance". Whether or not an academy experienced the last two stages--"transition" and "dissolution"--depended on factors such as the financial strength of an academy and the reliability of its principal supporters. To illustrate these stages and their philanthropic subtexts, the article focuses on three institutional "traditions", those of the Northampton Academy and its successors, the Warrington Academy, and Trevecca College and its successor Cheshunt College. (Contains 86 footnotes.)