The Grants Board of the Parish of Trinty Church in the City of New York was challenged to support the development of church-based electronic networks in 1984, by its chairman, D. Bruce Merrifield, who later became U.S. Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Science, Technology and Innovation. Dr. Merrifield strongly believed that, in this "Age of Information," Christians in developed nations had a moral obligation to provide access to the vast electronic informational data bases to church partners in developing nations.
Grants totalling more than $2 million have been made to support network development (including radio call and facsimile systems, as well as computer-modem networks) and the creation of electronic data bases of information, such as news from churches around the world.