United Thank Offering

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.