This November, the United Thank Offering Board has challenged The Episcopal Church to focus on gratitude for 30 days through the UTO Gratitude Challenge. In concert with the Gratitude Challenge, the UTO Board asks you to consider a gift to the Memorial Trust Fund. The UTO Memorial Trust Fund was founded in the 1970s to allow the UTO Board to grant every penny of the Ingathering to support innovative mission and ministry and no longer offset the cost of the Board or the creation of educational materials. The trust fund has received numerous donations since its inception and almost covers all the administrative and educational costs of UTO.

This November, we want to challenge all UTO Board members and diocesan coordinators to make a gift to support the Memorial Trust Fund. We invite you to consider the cost of shipping alone for all of the materials you receive and make a thank offering to the Memorial Trust Fund. The cost to print materials is significant:

• Blue Boxes cost $0.45 each,
• Prayer Books cost $1.81 each,
• Prayer Cards cost $0.21 each, and
• Brochures costs $1.37 each.

The Memorial Trust Fund also covers the costs to create these items and to have them proofread, translated, and designed.

A gift to the Memorial Trust Fund in thanksgiving for former or current UTO coordinators or Board members is a beautifully appropriate and enduring way to honor and thank them for their service and provide long-term support for the work they valued. 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 here. 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.

United Thank Offering members contribute to the Memorial Trust Fund every triennium in honor of loved ones and in gratitude for the gift of UTO in their lives and the work of UTO’s ministry of gratitude that coordinators carry out around the world. Your gift to the trust fund this year will allow us to continue and expand that work around the world. For more information on how to donate, please see the Memorial Trust Fund Brochure.