In 1983, a group of citizens investigated the possibility of eliminating requests for funding of social service groups from the Stow town meeting by establishing an alternative funding vehicle. They were frustrated by the long and tedious process of reviewing social service funding requests on the public town meeting floor. Using the United Way model, they organized the Stow Community Chest, a tax-exempt charitable organization, managed by a volunteer board of directors. The job of the Board is to raise funds and to review the funding requests of the groups that came forward thus eliminating the need to have this process at town meeting. The Community Chest raises money with an annual town-wide letter solicitation in the fall. They allocate the money raised to the various requesting groups. Through this mechanism, the founders successfully moved support of social, health and human sevices Stow from the public tax domain to the private, voluntary sector.