By Sherri Dietrich, President of the United Thank Offering Board
UTO’s Memorial Trust Fund allows the UTO Board to grant every penny of the Ingathering to support innovative mission and ministry. UTO also receives a small amount of funding from the General Convention, but that amount decreases every year, and we would like to be able to do without it so that money could go elsewhere. Without adequate funds in the Memorial Trust Fund, the UTO Board would either not be able to provide as many wonderful resources for promoting gratitude or would have to take those costs out of the Ingathering amount, which we would hate to do!
The trust fund has received numerous donations since its inception and currently covers almost all the administrative and educational costs of UTO, but one of the UTO Board’s goals is to grow the fund so that it covers all our administrative costs. We would like to achieve that goal by 2023, in honor of the 100th anniversary of Julia Chester Emery’s death, and that’s where UTO’s gratitude member-participants can help.
Please consider making a generous thank offering to the Memorial Trust Fund this year to help offset the shipping costs for all the materials you receive. The cost to print materials is significant:
- Blue Boxes cost 45 cents each
- Prayer books cost $1.81 each
- Prayer cards cost 21 cents each
- Brochures cost $1.37 each
The Memorial Trust Fund also covers the costs to create these items and have them proofread, translated, and designed. Additionally, the trust supports the creation of online materials, videos, social media, applications for smart phones, and more. Those of you who attended our training workshop days in June and July know just how many valuable resources UTO offers.
Finally, the Memorial Trust Fund also allows for the staff and Board to promote the United Thank Offering, administer the annual granting process, and respond to the needs of our members and grassroots network. Everyone who gives to the trust by Dec. 1 will receive a charming and useful eyeglass/screen wipe emblazoned with Chris Corbin’s icon of Julia Chester Emery; and the first 75 givers of $100 or more will receive a beautiful wooden and tile-topped box made by people from a UTO grant site, the Princess Basma Center in Jerusalem.
A gift to the Memorial Trust Fund in thanksgiving for anyone who’s touched your life is a beautifully appropriate and enduring way to honor and thank them. The names of all those who are honored or remembered with a gift to the fund are permanently recorded in our Memorial Trust Fund book and kept in the United Thank Offering Office, displayed at each General Convention/Triennial Meeting of the Episcopal Church Women, and viewable online. Every gift is acknowledged with a card to you and to anyone else you specify. We also acknowledge and thank each donor in our annual report.
You may also wish to remember the Memorial Trust Fund in your will, which will support the ongoing work of promoting gratitude and funding the church’s mission and will also endure as a thank offering for all the blessings you experienced throughout your lifetime. Learn more about this option.
United Thank Offering members contribute to the Memorial Trust Fund every triennium in honor of loved ones, in gratitude for the gift of UTO in their lives, and in thanks for UTO’s ministry of gratitude that coordinators carry out around the world. Your gift to the Memorial Trust Fund this year will allow us to continue and expand that work around the world.