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The United Thank Offering (UTO) began in 1889 at the Triennial Meeting of the Woman’s Auxiliary as a special fund-raising initiative to support missionary work of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (DFMS). Since UTOs inception, they have been a form of self-organized participation by women in The Episcopal Church. The UTO has also existed as a component group of the DFMS and its women’s ministries agency, both of which were within the oversight authority of the Executive Council and its predecessor bodies.

In 1935, with annual budgets exceeding a quarter million dollars and close to a thousand grant requests, the Executive Committee of the Woman’s Auxiliary hired their first manager (called the assistant secretary) to coordinate the grant and public relations process under the direction of the National Council. In 1958, when the Woman’s Auxiliary was integrated into Church structure as the General Division of Women’s Work. The UTO staff officer was appointed directly by the Presiding Bishop for the first time. A decade later, the Executive Council introduced an important change when it subsumed women’s work and ministry under the umbrella of the Committee for Women in place of the General Division of Women’s Work. This change led directly to the recommendation to Council of two separate agencies: the Committee on Lay Ministries (for women) and a clearly independent UTO Committee to continue the fund-raising and grant allocation program. The UTO Committee was replaced by the UTO Board, with revised by-laws and a Memorandum of Understanding in 2012.

Initially the United Thank Offering was collected to fund missionaries and building projects; however, its scope expanded over its 125 year history to include grants for ministries that met societal needs, such as educational programs, childcare programs, and outreach to under-served populations.

Thomas Hubbard Vail was born in Richmond, Virginia, on October 21, 1812. He graduated from Trinity College, Hartford in 1831, and from the General Theological Seminary (GTS) in 1835. In 1858, he received a Doctor of Sacred Theology from Brown University and later, in 1875, he earned a Doctor of Laws from the University of Kansas.

After his graduation from GTS, Vail was ordained deacon in 1835 and a priest two years later. Around this time, he married Frances Sophia Vose with whom he had a daughter, Maria Vail. From 1837 to 1863, Vail served as rector for the following parishes: Christ Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1837-1838); St. John’s Church, Essex, Connecticut (1839-1844); Christ Church, Westerly, Rhode Island (1844-1857); St. Thomas’ Church, Taunton, Massachusetts (1857-1863); and Trinity Church, Muscatine, Iowa (1863-1864).

Vail was ordained the first Bishop of Kansas, on December 15, 1864, at Trinity Church, in Muscatine, IA. Three years later and after Frances’ death, he married Ellen Ledlie Bowman, Samuel Bowman’s daughter. With her he had a daughter, Ellen Sitgreaves Vail (Motter), in whose honor the Vail-Bowman correspondence was donated to the Archives. As bishop, Vail developed the new diocese, founded a wide network of parishes, and established both an Episcopal Seminary (1865) and the first Protestant hospital in Kansas, Christ Hospital in Topeka (1884). He was known for his rhetorical skill and for making the Church’s teachings accessible. His creative works include: The Comprehensive Church, Life of Lyde, and Sermon and the Consecration of the Chapel of Griswold College. Bishop Vail died in Philadelphia on October 6, 1889.

Authorized by the 65th General Convention in September 1976, Venture in Mission (VIM) was a large scale fund-raising program resolved to provide mission development funding for the national church. VIM was put into motion by early 1979, and ultimately received the participation of 90 domestic and overseas dioceses. The 1979 and 1982 General Conventions continued the program with resolutions of commendation and appreciation. The original goal was to raise $100 million. By 1985 that goal had surpassed $170 million. The funds were dispersed to various diocesan programs that included community-based ministries for marginalized populations, education, lay and ordained ministry development, urban and rural work, health services, community development, the recruitment of black clergy, training in Hispanic ministries, and overseas missions projects in Costa Rica, Tokyo, Tanzania, and Uganda. The program formally concluded at the end of 1988, although disbursements from existing accounts continued for some years after.

Denmark Industrial School in Denmark, South Carolina was founded in 1897 by Elizabeth Evelyn Wright, a graduate of Tuskegee Institute. Its name changed to Voorhees Industrial School in1902, in honor of donors Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Voorhees of Clinton, New Jersey.

In 1929 the curriculum expanded to include post-secondary education and the school was renamed Voorhees Normal and Industrial School. The name changed again in 1947 to Voorhees School and Junior College.

In 1962 it was accredited as four-year Voorhees College, and in 2022 it became Voorhees University. The school was affiliated with the American Church Institute from 1924 to 1967.

Maurice Votaw began his service as a missionary in 1922 after applying for a post at St. John’s University in Shanghai, China. After helping to found the School of Journalism there, he taught journalistic writing, history, principles of journalism and advertising, and copy editing for seventeen years.

In 1939, during the tumultuous years of the Sino-Japanese War, Votaw was asked to become an advisor to the Chinese Ministry of Information in Chungking. A leave of absence from St. John's lengthened into a stay of nine years, as returning to Shanghai was deemed unsafe. After his return in 1948, he was elected Dean of the College of the Arts at St. John's. This appointment lasted only a year, however, as the Communist forces drew nearer to the city, and in 1949, Votaw returned to the United States on what he later recalled as “the last regularly scheduled ship.”

From 1950 until his retirement in 1970, Votaw taught journalism at the University of Missouri. He is remembered as a pioneering figure at the School of Journalism, a graduate who helped to carry “the Missouri Method” to China, and returned to give what he learned in China back to the students of Missouri.

Maurice Votaw died in 1981.