Following the invasion of Ukrainian lands in 1939, Ukrainian American community leaders began to demand some unifying representation, so that Ukrainians, acting in concert, could raise a meaningful voice in defense of their ancestral homeland. Four fraternal organizations – the Ukrainian National Association, the Ukrainian Workingmen’s Association, the Providence Association of Ukrainian Catholics and the Ukrainian National Aid Association – called for a National Convention, a Congress of Ukrainians in America, at which a permanent representation was founded: the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA). For UCCA’s founders, the fates of both America and Ukraine were ultimately indivisible: by protecting the freedom of the one, Ukrainian Americans could assure the restoration of the other. Toward this vital and noble end, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of American was created.

Today’s UCCA is a non-profit, non-partisan community-based organization, with local all-volunteer chapters across the United States, a national office in New York City, as well as a Washington, D.C. bureau, the Ukrainian National Information Service (UNIS). Since 1940, UCCA has convened delegates from across the U.S. at its quadrennial “Congress of Ukrainians in America.“ These conventions elect an Executive Board to carry out the plans and directives agreed upon at the Congress, under the guidance of UCCA’s National Council, the highest ruling body between conventions.

UCCA unites nearly 30 national Ukrainian American organizations under one umbrella body, UCCA’s National Council, consisting of representatives of UCCA local branches, delegates of the main Ukrainian religious faiths in the United States, the Editor-in-Chief of “The Ukrainian Quarterly,” as well as fraternal, educational, youth, veteran, religious, cultural, social, and humanitarian organizations. Local branches of UCCA are incorporated throughout the United States, charged with meeting the needs of both their dues-paying membership and the larger Ukrainian American community in which they operate, as well as identifying and promoting activities of specific interest to their members.

UCCA is a founding member of the Central and East European Coalition, which coordinates the efforts of national ethnic organizations representing 20 million Americans. In 1967, UCCA collaborated with like-minded organizations to create the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC), the largest international assembly of Ukrainian public organizations. Since 2003, UWC is a registered NGO in consultative status with the United Nations, where UCCA representatives attend weekly briefings and committee meetings on behalf of the worldwide Ukrainian diaspora of over 20 million people. As of the XI Ukrainian World Congress convention in 2018, the President of UCCA serves as the Third Vice President of UWC and UCCA’s Executive Director serves as UWC’s Regional Vice President for all Ukrainian Diaspora organizations in North America.