[United Thank Offering] United Thank Offering (UTO) invites Episcopalians to practice gratitude in inventive ways, with every penny donated going out into the world as grants i to Episcopal and Anglican Communion groups aiming to solve difficult community problems the following year. There is a saying that “gratitude makes you fall in love with the life you already have” and, once you feel the power of gratitude, you want to spread it around so everyone feels it and others are blessed by it. Read on to hear about how your parish can get involved.
EDLA’s UTO Church of Faithful Service Awards
During the covid19 pandemic, many churches fell out of the practice of holding an annual UTO Ingathering. To encourage parishes in the Diocese of Los Angeles to restart, we created “UTO Church of Faithful Service Awards” designed to be given out at Diocesan Convention each year. When a parish makes an annual donation to UTO in at least 3 of the last 5 years, we will award the parish a plaque that features a beautiful UTO ceramic tile made by Jerusalem Pottery and shows the years you have participated. Afterward in each year your parish donates to UTO, we will award you a new add-on to the plaque so you can watch your generosity grow with time.
How to Participate in UTO
Participating in UTO can be as easy as holding a collection on any given Sunday or running a UTO Ingathering with your parish over the course of a month. In a typical UTO In-gathering, cardboard boxes are handed out to parishioners and they are asked to place a dollar in the box when they are especially grateful for something in their daily life. Something fantastic, like a child with an excellent report card or an amazing weekend adventure with your family, might warrant an even bigger donation. Then, on a pre-determined date, parishioners bring their filled UTO boxes back to church, the offerings are blessed then sent in to UTO. UTO provides you with all the resources needed to hold a UTO Ingathering free of charge (order on-line at the UTO website). It takes just one parishioner to run a UTO In-Gathering, and, to make it easy, UTO provides a step-by-step guide at https://unitedthankoffering.com/ingathering. Also feel free to email our UTO Diocesan Coordinator, Tammy Smecker-Hane (tsmecker@cox.net), and she’ll be happy to talk to you about it or come to your parish’s vestry meeting or outreach committee meeting to get you started.
UTO Resources – Order Spring Materials by Mar 20!
UTO provides creative resources to help your parish grown in practicing gratitude. Parish kits with resources are free of charge, and a large number of our resources are downloadable from the website so you can print them at any time. Some gratitude resources are geared for adult parishioners and some for children and teens (great material for Sunday School). Specific resources are designed for use at different times of the year including Thanksgiving, Christmas, Lent and Spring. UTO continually develops new resources.
Materials for Spring/Summer 2026 are on-line now and can be found at the UTO website at https://unitedthankoffering.com/spring. If you want to order a parish kit with material for a UTO Ingathering in the Spring, please do so by Mar 20 so they can be delivered to you by Apr 15. The materials include the usual UTO boxes (specify whether you want the normal blue UTO boxes or the new color-your-own UTO boxes) as well as other very helpful items. This Spring’s material is inspired by the parable of the mustard seed and is geared to growing your gratitude. It includes a scavenger hunt for children and the “5 Minute Gratitude Journal” for adults that we gave out at the last Diocesan Convention.
In addition, your parish might be interested in UTO’s Vacation Bible School cirriculum called “Waves of Gratitude”, which you can find on-line at https://unitedthankoffering.com/vbs, that includes lots of STEAM activities for children with a wide range of ages. Let your Sunday School teachers now about it, too.
UTO Grants – “Gifts of God for the People of God” for 2027
Our diocese supported a proposal for the 2026 UTO Grant competition, whose theme was bringing justice and bridging divides, by the diocesan group Sacred Resistance led by the Revs. Jaime Edwards-Acton and Francisco Garcia, which, if awarded, will allow them to hire a full-time community organizer to work on the issue of justice for immigrants and their families and enable closer collaboration with Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE). Awards will be announced in May so please say some prayers for their success in the meantime.
The theme for next year’s 2027 UTO grants has been announced. Inspired by the Holy Eucharist Rite II in the Book of Common Prayer, the grants will focus on how we can be “The gifts of God for the People of God.” UTO is looking to fund innovative and imaginative projects that are focused on connecting the unique gifts of a church/diocese/province with the unique needs of a community. If you are interested in applying, please consult the grant proposal guidelines at https://unitedthankoffering.com/apply. Also email our UTO Diocesan Coordinator, Tammy Smecker-Hane (tsmecker@cox.net), so she can help you navigate the process. There will be an internal diocesan deadline in October for UTO grant proposal ideas for the Diocese of Los Angeles because each bishop can endorse only one UTO grant. Look for the announcement of the deadline in the Episcopal News and Resource Round-Up this coming Fall.