[3] The group was renamed in 1965 as the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (USPG) after incorporating the activities of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA).

Working through local partner churches, the charity's current focus is the support of emergency relief, longer-term development, and Christian leadership training projects.

The charity encourages parishes in United Kingdom and Ireland to participate in Christian mission work through fundraising, prayer, and by setting up links with its projects around the world.

King William III issued a charter establishing the SPG as "an organisation able to send priests and schoolteachers to America to help provide the Church's ministry to the colonists".

[6] The society's first two missionaries, graduates of the University of Aberdeen, George Keith and Patrick Gordon, sailed from England for North America on 24 April 1702.

[7] The SPG funded clergy and schoolmasters, dispatched books, and supported catechists through annual fundraising sermons in London that publicised the work of the mission society.

With the aim of supplying funding for Codrington College in Barbados, the SPG was the beneficiary of the forced labour of thousands of enslaved Africans on the plantations.

[14] In 1758, the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Secker agreed to reimburse funds to the SPG's accounts for the purchase of slaves from Africa and the hiring of third party enslaved labour.

Tom Butler, the Bishop of Southwark, confirmed in a speech before the vote that the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts had owned the Codrington Plantations.

USPG has pledged, in response to proposals that Codrington Trust has advanced, 18M Barbadian dollars - (£7M) - to be spent in Barbados over the next 10–15 years to support this work.

The Society's work in the wider region made significant progress under the leadership of Bishop Robert Gray, expanding to Natal in 1850, Zululand in 1859, Swaziland in 1871 and Mozambique in 1894.

In 1866, the SPG established the Ladies' Association for Promoting the Education of Females in India and other Heathen Countries in Connection with the Missions of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.

[23] In China, Ethel Margaret Phillips (1876–1951) was an SPG medical missionary who constructed two hospitals, worked with the YWCA, and went on to establish a private practice.

In the context of decolonisation in Africa and India's independence in 1947, new models of global mission engagement between the interdependent member provinces of the Anglican Communion were required.

The Society found a new role in support of clergy training and in the movement of community development specialists, resources and ideas around the world church.

Ghana South Africa Zimbabwe China India Japan Myanmar Barbados Canada United States New Zealand Australia The modern charity's work is devoted to increasing local churches' capacity to be agents of positive change in the communities that they serve.

The charity is also involved in the training and development of Anglican lay and ordained church leaders and localised social advocacy on a diverse range of issues from gender based violence to climate change.