2025-26 Annual Giving Drive

What UU AVL needs now is your pledge of stewardship — an ongoing commitment to supporting a visionary organization and our sense of shared mission. 

We are living through a critical time in our shared history. The world faces existential challenges, with the rise of far-right movements and leaders that seek to scapegoat and disenfranchise the least among us. Our climate continues to shift in alarming ways, as Hurricane Helene demonstrated so keenly. Now, more than ever, Asheville needs the courageous and sheltering presence of Unitarian Universalism. 

This community has long answered the call to love. We’ve worked to address issues around immigration, trans rights, reproductive rights, climate change, collective liberation, and democracy. We’ve made it clear — wherever you come from, whomever you love, wherever you are on your spiritual journey — you are welcome among us in this place.

The chaotic storms of life are raging, and sometimes we just need a place to find shelter. When we come into UU Avl for respite from the winds we’re not simply hunkering down in the nearest hiding place. We find shelter in this place because of our shared Unitarian Universalist values, and it deserves a level of commitment to sustaining this safe place so we’re ready to meet this moment in history, linking arms with courage for whatever lies ahead.

Of course, our congregation does have urgent goals, needs, and ongoing commitments—everything from mundane operations to exciting things like Sunday worship, Faith Formation, our covenant groups and outreach ministries. A $150,000 budget deficit threatens to force difficult decisions for our core programs. All this demands regular, predictable and generous financial commitment from members and friends. It requires ongoing stewardship support, not simply donations.

Let us take this moment to recognize each person’s responsibility to tend something that is not ultimately for us alone. We received this faith and this congregation from a prior generation, and we will pass it on to a future generation. And at this moment in time, we are loving and caring for people who need us today. Now more than ever, UU Avl needs good stewards who will tend this powerful force for transformation.

Please review our Path to A Balanced Budget & Fair Share Giving Guide and fill out the pledge form below by March 30. We invite you to stretch your current level of support if you can. If you’re not yet a part of this supportive network, we invite you to join in! The work of transforming human lives—indeed, of transforming human society—isn’t work that we’ll accomplish in one month, or one year. But if we are successful now, we will close our current budget gap, and pass on a vital and sustainable UU Avl to all who need this shelter, this loving spiritual home.