The first Coptic Christian charitable organization in Egypt, Al-Jam‘iyyah al-Qibtiyya al-Khayriyyah al-Kubra (the Great Coptic Benevolent Society), was established with the support of Islamic modernists and Muslim dignitaries at the end of the nineteenth century. The society assisted with religious endowments, educational institutions, and services to the poor outside of the church or state-run charitable institutions. Influenced by the benevolent associations of their Islamic counterparts such as the Muslim Charitable Society of Alexandria, the Great Coptic Benevolent Society also supported the plight of poor Muslims and served the less-fortunate across religious communities. The organization continued their cross-confessional collaboration into the twentieth century where Muslims and Copts both served on committees affiliated with the society to develop fundraising projects, educational initiatives, and public health institutions. Following the Egyptian Revolution of 1919, these partnerships grew along nationalistic and gender-based solidarities following widespread calls for Egyptian self-determination from British Occupation. The shortcomings of the Khedival state and conservative tendencies of the religious hierarchies within their own faith communities enabled these constitutive ecumenical networks to take form. These partnerships were made possible through the affluence and influence of elites within each religious community who shared notions of modernist and reformist sentimentalities. Building on what Ussama Makdisi has called an ‘ecumenical frame,’ I consider the scope of charitable activities of the Great Coptic Benevolent Society and its sister organizations between 1881-1931 as an alternate but parallel space where cross-confessional partnerships took form amid growing sectarian tensions at the turn of the twentieth century in Egypt. Based on Arabic, French, and English-language sources including society publications, private papers, and newspapers, I argue that the making of ‘ecumenical elites’ offers new ways to consider the relationship between reform, religion, and modernity in nineteenth and twentieth century Egypt. Egypt.