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At the General Convention in 1940, delegates authorized the Presiding Bishop to call for Church members to donate to relief efforts for war refugees. Later that year, the National Council established an advisory committee for those relief efforts, the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief (PBFWR).

Over the course of 1949 and 1950, the National Council expanded the scope of PBFWR’s grant-funded projects and specifically enabled it to finance the costs of The Episcopal Church’s participation in the World Council of Churches. Consequently, the new Presiding Bishop's Committee on World Relief and Church Cooperation was authorized in April 1950 to make appropriations within the terms of the budget item for world relief and church cooperation.

While the Presiding Bishop's Committee on World Relief and Church Cooperation formulated policy and approved grants and appropriations, the Department of Christian Social Relations administered the operation of approved programs, which included humanitarian efforts, particularly aid to refugees, parish development, and ecumenical programs. The name was changed to the Committee on World Relief and Inter-Church Aid in 1959.
Some time after that, it appears that the divisional work was abandoned; however, after an ad-hoc committee of Council was assigned to study world relief work in 1972, the Executive Council approved a charter for the PBFWR.

In its later years, the PBFWR continued to shift the focus of its work towards global disaster relief and, in 2000, renamed itself Episcopal Relief and Development and obtained separate incorporation in 2002.

Beginning in 1841, General Convention recognized the need for a person, chosen by the House of Bishops, to procure and maintain all the Journals of the proceedings and record the time and place of the consecrations of all bishops. At the time, the Librarian of the General Theological Seminary was chosen to be the “Register of the House of Bishops”. It wasn’t until 1853 that a Canon was officially passed establishing a Registrar of the General Convention, with the Rev. John Henry Hobart elected to fill the position.

In 2012, Canon I.1.5 was amended, stipulating that the Secretary of the General Convention would act as the Registrar going forward.

When the Church Pension Fund was established by the General Convention in 1913, no provision was made to include deaconesses. To rectify this, deaconesses formed their own not-for-profit corporation and began to raise funds.

On September 30, 1927, the Retiring Fund for Deaconesses (RFD) of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America was formally incorporated to provide financial assistance to retired and disabled deaconesses who were unable to provide for themselves.

Forty-five years later, on September 27, 1972, the RFD voted to change its name to The Retiring Fund for Women in the Diaconate in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America to reflect the ordination of women to the diaconate after the General Convention of 1970. It began operating under this name in 1973.

The RFD has since changed names twice more, both times to acknowledge an expanded membership. In 1998 it changed its name to The Fund for the Diaconate of The Episcopal Church in the United States of America, following a 1990 vote to admit male deacons. In 2018 it changed its name to The Fund for the Diaconate of the Episcopal Church, emphasizing its availability to all deacons of The Episcopal Church and continues to operate under that name.

In 1942, Wilbur Cochel offered his 320-acre farm, Roanridge, near Kansas City, Missouri to serve as a training and conference center for the rural mission of the Episcopal Church. In light of the Joint Commission on Rural Work’s report of 1940 calling for the promotion of rural work within the Episcopal Church, the Church accepted Mr. Cochel's offer. Other than the farm itself, programs at Roanridge were administered by the National Town and Country Church Institute (NTCCI), which held its first session on the farm in 1945.

In donating his farm and estate to the Episcopal Church, Cochel established the Roanridge Rural Training Foundation in 1947. Funding and administration of the Center was the joint responsibility of the Trustees of the Roanridge Foundation and the National Council’s Division of Town and Country. The Executive Secretary of the Division of Town and Country Work, the Rev. Clifford Samuelson, managed the Center from New York City until the appointment of the Center’s first resident director, the Rev. Norman Foote, in 1950.

In 1955, the Board of Trustees incorporated the Roanridge Rural Training Foundation as the Roanridge Rural Training Center, Inc. The corporation changed its name to the Roanridge Foundation, Inc. in 1972 with a Board of Directors constituted in the same manner as the former Board of Trustees.

Initially, Roanridge offered agricultural training, however, over time it shifted to emphasize conferences and short courses for clergy and laity. The most active of these was the Summer Parish Training Program, during which students lived and worked on the farm while serving several local rural congregations. Other noteworthy activities taking place at Roanridge included the summer Vacation Church School Program for local children, Church Army training sessions, National Episcopal Town and Country Conferences, Indian Work consultations, and meetings of the Rural Workers Fellowship and National Advisory Committee on Town and Country.

With the waning need for rural work and the financial status of the Roanridge Foundation deteriorating, the Foundation Board of Trustees voted to dissolve the Wilbur A. Cochel Trust at its meeting of August 12, 1976. Its assets were divided between the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, Holy Trinity Cathedral in Kansas City, and St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City. With the proceeds from the sale of the land, the Executive Council established the Wilbur A. Cochel, Caroline F. Cochel, and Roanridge Trust for the training of rural ministry.

The Rural Workers Fellowship (RWF) was first organized in 1924 in Madison, Wisconsin at the National Episcopal Conference of Rural Workers, with which many of its leadership maintained a long relationship. The Fellowship’s founding bylaws stated its purpose as: (1) to promote the interest of the whole ministry to the Church in rural communities; (2) to increase the fellowship among those interested in such services; and (3) to aid the National Council in its service to the rural and field workers. While maintaining its operational independence, the RWF was very closely aligned through mission and personal relationships to The Episcopal Church’s National Council.

For many years the Department of Christian Social Service’s Division of Rural Work led the effort to support rural ministry and provided a subsidy to the RWF to that end. In 1934, the Division of Rural Work was abolished and the Department of Christian Social Service continued the work of rural church promotion as best it could.

In 1941, there was revival of the RWF in the life of the national body as the National Council reorganized and rural work became a part of the Department of Domestic Missions. In 1946, the Fellowship was incorporated and in 1947, a new constitution and bylaws were adopted. In 2005, the Rural Workers Fellowship was renamed the Rural Ministries Network. The RMN appears in The Episcopal Church Annual in 2017, however, by 2019 it was no longer listed.

The Social Welfare Office began in 1968 with the appointment of Woodrow W. Carter, Sr. as a senior associate for specialized field services. The office was originally attached to the newly formed section of Experimental and Specialized Services (ESS), which had formed out of the former Joint Urban Program.

The ESS unit's focus on prominent contemporary issues is exemplified by the 1968 Council decision to earmark $50,000 to “finance a counseling and legal advice service to Church members with conscience problems relating to the military draft.” One of the unit’s key duties was the provision of field services to Church agencies, “devoted primarily to the development of church programs of action in society and ministries to special groups.” At the time of his initial appointment, Carter’s position was intended to focus on issues and services relating to children and families, particularly minority children.

Following another staff reorganization of the Program Function that began in 1970, the ESS unit ceased and Carter was listed as Social Welfare Officer in 1972 in the Social Welfare Services unit of the Program area. His role was to serve as a liaison to various committees and commissions as needed.

Through Carter’s work, the Social Welfare Office grew to serve in a proactive advocacy role. In 1977 Carter organized the first meeting of an ad hoc group that became the National Commission for Social and Specialized Ministries (NCSSM), for which he subsequently became the assigned staff officer. The emphasis on supporting local ministry is found in a November 1980 Council resolution which called on the Social Welfare Office to “marshal and coordinate all possible resources available through the Episcopal Church Center in support of dioceses and parishes ministry (sic) with disabled persons.”

Following Carter’s retirement in 1983, Presiding Bishop Allin announced the appointment of Marcia Newcombe as the new Social Welfare Officer to work “with most of the Church’s agencies involved with delivery of human services: welfare, bail and criminal justice reform, and ministries among aging, deaf, alcoholics and other groups.” The release noted further that she would also monitor social services legislation and serve as an ecumenical liaison to educational and activist groups in those areas.

It is unclear when this office was dissolved, or if it changed names.

The Society of St. Margaret is a religious order of the Anglican Church with related but independent chapters on several continents. The order began in 1856 at East Grinstead, England under the guidance of by John Henry Neale. Houses followed in London at St. Saviour’s Priory in 1870 and St. Margaret’s House in Boston, Massachusetts in 1873.

The Sisters who arrived in Boston in 1873 were invited to help minister to the sick at Boston’s Children’s Hospital, a ministry that ended in 1917. The order's mission evolved into hospital care, health and wellness of women and children, education in pursuit of community, and a supportive religious enclave for independent women seeking a spiritual life and motivation. The Boston chapter purchased their first permanent site in Louisburg Square in 1881 and began to generate mission houses throughout the East and in Canada. St. Monica’s infirmary (Joy Street) and later St. Monica’s Home in Roxbury continued in operation until 1988 as a ministry to the elderly. The other nearby institution, in Duxbury, Massachusetts, was a summer camp program for girls and summer residence for the Sisters. The Duxbury property became the permanent House for the Society with the closing of the Roxbury convent in 2011.

Other houses and missions that were established are Montreal (1885), Toronto (at Bracebridge, closed in 1944), Philadelphia (1884), New Hartford (near Utica, NY, n.d.), New York (Oliver St., closed 1956), Newark (St. Barnabas’ Hospital, closed 1923, and House of Prayer, 1939), and Lexington, Kentucky (St. Agnes House, 1975). Most notably, the Sisters established a mission in Port au Prince, Haiti, in 1927, where they opened a school for children with disabilities, founded a home for elderly women, and established an orchestra, among other ministries. The Society continues its ministries in Boston, New York City, and Port-au-Prince to this day.

The Special Committee on Theological Education in the Episcopal Church (TEEC) began in 1965 as an outgrowth of an initiative originating in the Division of Christian Ministries, part of Executive Council’s Home Department, to respond to a perceived crisis in recruitment, retention, and education of candidates for the ministry, which required careful study before any recommendations could be made to General Convention.

The Committee, chaired by Dr. Nathan M. Pusey, met for the first time on March 28, 1966. As part of its work, the Committee consulted seminarians and young clergymen to understand their experiences and concerns, and shared these findings with General Convention in their 1967 report.

The Committee saw the need for “an agency with power” to overhaul the Church’s entire system of theological education. It recommended the creation of a Board for Theological Education with members appointed by the Presiding Bishop and reporting to General Convention. The work of the Board was to find strategies for recruiting promising candidates to the ministry, to modernize the seminary system and improve its curricula, to determine necessary funding, and to expand educational opportunities to laymen and women.

The recommendation was adopted by the 1967 General Convention.

After an appeal to General Convention of the need for a hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina for African Americans, St. Agnes Hospital and Nursing School was founded in 1896. The hospital occupied buildings on the grounds of St. Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute and served as both a hospital and nurses’ training school. By 1931 it had grown to a 100-bed hospital serving 2,000 patients annually.

St. Agnes was affiliated with the American Church Institute (ACI) from approximately 1906 until 1958, when ACI discontinued appropriations in order to conform to its mission to support only church-related schools and in anticipation of a new county health system.

St. Agnes Nursing School closed in 1959.

St. Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute (Raleigh, North Carolina) was founded in 1867 by the Rev. J. Brinton Smith of the Freedman’s Commission and the Rt. Rev. Thomas Atkinson, Bishop of North Carolina, from the beginnings of a day and Sunday school for African American children of Christ Church Parish. Smith served as the first principal and Atkinson as the president of the Board of Trustees.

In 1893 the school changed its name to St. Augustine’s School. In 1919 the school became known as St. Augustine’s Junior College, then in 1928 as St. Augustine’s College. For some time it was the only four-year liberal arts college for African Americans sponsored by the Episcopal Church. It was one of the first schools to be affiliated with the American Church Institute (ACI) in 1906 and remained under that organization until ACI dissolved in 1967. It remains a four-year liberal arts college.

St. Mark’s School (Birmingham, Alabama) was founded in 1891 as an outgrowth of St. Mark’s Church, with financial support from J. A. Van Hoose, a white Episcopal deacon and the 10th Mayor of Birmingham. It was the first institution in the city to offer secondary education to black students and was initially established as a girls’ boarding school.

St. Mark’s was an American Church Institute (ACI) school from 1912 to 1941 when it was dropped due to the exorbitant expense necessary to renovate its buildings. Calhoun School in Lowndes County, Alabama was brought under ACI oversight in its place. It is uncertain whether the school continued to operate after 1941.

The Rev. James Solomon Russell founded St. Paul’s Normal and Industrial School in Lawrenceville, Virginia in 1888 and served as its principal until his death in 1935. He was succeeded by his son, the Rev. J. Alvin Russell.

In 1941 it began to offer a four-year degree program and changed its name to St. Paul’s Polytechnic Institute. The school’s name changed again to St. Paul’s College in 1957. At one time it was the largest of the American Church Institute’s (ACI) schools with over 1,500 students.

The school was affiliated with ACI until its dissolution in 1967.

St. Philip’s Normal and Industrial School in San Antonio, Texas was founded in1898 by the Rt. Rev. James Steptoe Johnson, Bishop of West Texas, and was headed by Artemesia Bowden as its dean from 1902 to 1954.

St. Philip’s was never administered by the American Church Institute (ACI), though appropriations were made to it from 1918 to 1931. It was incorporated into the San Antonio Independent School District in 1942 as St. Philip’s Junior College, affiliated with San Antonio Junior College under the control of the San Antonio Union Junior College District from 1946.

It began admitting white students in 1955; in 2003 the majority of its student body was Latino.