Willard helped found the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in Cleveland, Ohio, and became its first corresponding secretary.
On November 18, 1874, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was formally organized in Cleveland, Ohio, emerging out of the grassroots temperance crusades that had swept American towns earlier that year. Frances Willard, who had already gained recognition for her organizing work with the Chicago temperance crusade, was among the founding leaders and was elected the organization's first corresponding secretary.
This role placed Willard at the administrative heart of a rapidly growing national movement, responsible for communicating with local unions springing up across the country and helping to knit together a decentralized grassroots effort into a coherent national organization. Her early involvement in the WCTU's founding established her reputation as an effective organizer and communicator, skills that would soon propel her into the organization's highest leadership position.
The WCTU would go on to become the largest and most influential women's organization in the United States during the late nineteenth century, advocating not only for temperance but eventually for woman suffrage, labor reform, and a host of other progressive causes. Willard's foundational role in 1874 set the stage for her transformation of the WCTU, under her later presidency, into a broad-based vehicle for women's social and political empowerment—one that reached far beyond its original temperance mission into nearly every corner of American reform politics.