Unlike the tradeguilds or the numerous scuole piccole, the Scuole Grandi included persons of many occupations, although citizenship was required. Unlike the rigidly aristocratic Venetian governmental Great Council of Venice, which for centuries only admitted a restricted number of noble families, membership in the Scuole Grandi was open to all citizens, and did not permit nobles to gain director roles. Citizens could include persons in the third generation of residency in the islandrepublic, or persons who had paid taxes in Venice for fifteen years. The Scuole Grandi proved to be one of the few outlets for non-noble Venetian citizens to control powerful institutions. 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. During the Middle Age, each school had its own regulation, named capitulare or mariegola. Their authonomy was lost during the Renaissance when the institutions were subjected to a specific Magistracy that ruled the office of the leaders and oversaw the drafting of Capitulars After a process of secularization, charities lost their Christian identity and were absorbed into the Venetian structure of the State, that encompassed an exhibiting unity-order among the social classes of the Repubblic, as it is depicted in the Procession in St. Mark's Square. While Venice deleted the Middle Age ius commune from its hierarchy of the sources of law, Grandi Scuole were divided into two opposite classes, and started to securitize their immobiliar investments under the central direction of private banks, even if within the bounds of their history redistribution rules. The Poverty Laws approved in 1528-29 entrusted from the State to the Grandi Scuole system all the charitable and social activities, like: handouts, drugs, burials of needy persons, hospices for widows and children, food and lodging for pilgrims, brotherhood for prisoners. The Serenissima kept for itself a residual role in social justice, uniquely related to those forms of poverty that may become a negative element for the new order of the aristocratic Republic.
The Scuole Grandi were regulated by the Procurators of Venice, who set forth a complex balance of elected offices, mirroring the structures of the republic. Paying members could vote in the larger Capitolo, which in turn elected 16 members to a supervisory Banca: a chief officer, Vicario, Guardian da Mattin, a scribe and twelve officers known as the Degani. A second board, known as the Zonta was meant to examine the accounts of the Banca. Typically the main building consisted of an androne, or meeting hall for the provision of charity; the upper floor contained the salone used for meeting of the Capitolo and a smaller room, the albergo, used for meetings of the Banca and Zonta. They often had an affiliated hospital and church. The Scuola often sheltered relics, commissioned famous works of art, or patronized musicians and composers.
