A Wartime Fund Renamed for a Wider Mission in 2000

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Episcopal Relief and Development was established in 1940 as the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief, created specifically to assist refugees fleeing the humanitarian catastrophe of the Second World War in Europe. The Fund kept that name for six decades, work that expanded well beyond its wartime origin as the twentieth century went on, before its leadership renamed it Episcopal Relief and Development in 2000 to reflect a mission that by then reached across disaster relief and long-term community development alike, not only emergency response to war.

The organization operates today as the official international relief and development agency of The Episcopal Church, working with more than three million people each year across the developing world on emergency response, maternal and child health, food security and disaster resilience, in partnership with the Anglican Communion's global network of dioceses and local partners. Its 1940 origin as a fund built to answer one specific wartime emergency has grown into a standing programme of ongoing development work, but the organization's institutional identity, an agency of The Episcopal Church working through Anglican Communion partners rather than running its own field operations from scratch, has not changed since the Presiding Bishop's Fund first opened its books.