The article investigates the spread of one of the first pedagogical concepts available worldwide during the first half of the nineteenth century: the monitorial system. Its wide diffusion depended, to a considerable extent, on the work of voluntary organisations. The article investigates the work of the two most important of these, the British and Foreign School Society and the National Society. It focuses on the strategies these two charities employed in acquiring donations in a voluntary sector that was densely populated and highly competitive. Drawing on modern marketing concepts as analytical tools, the article argues that the monitorial system's wide diffusion was to a considerable extent the result of early forms of marketing. By introducing marketing concepts in the history of education, the article seeks to broaden the debate on the diffusion of educational concepts and, moreover, to contribute to the relatively new field of (nonprofit) marketing history. (Contains 1 figure and 65 footnotes.)