In March 2019 the charity changed its working name to Clergy Support Trust.

The charity’s name has gone through several changes over the years. Although the name given in the 1678 Royal Charter was The Governors of the Charity for Relief of the Poor Widows and Children of Clergymen, in practice this did not reflect the full breadth of the charity’s work with clergy families. The charity quickly became known as the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy, reflecting the nature of the charity’s foundation in 1655. The more recent working name of Sons & Friends of the Clergy only came into use following the 2012 merger between the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy and the Friends of the Clergy Corporation.

In September 2018 we consulted over 1,200 stakeholders, many of them beneficiaries of the charity, on whether we should change our name, and on possible alternatives which would better communicate our charitable purpose. Our key goal was to see if we could find a name that made us more relevant and accessible to today’s serving Anglican clergy, almost a third of whom are women.

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Name Change Statistics from Strategy 2019-2022 Document