Celebrating Your Giving Spirit

Because of our generous donors, Cherry Hill Seminary is starting the year strong and healthy!

This year 83 wonderful supporters helped us raise more than $20,000, or nearly 20% of our annual budget. Some of you are monthly recurring givers, others simply stepped up when asked and dug a little deeper. We love how the Votaries Alumni Circle harnessed the Giving Tuesday energy on December 2 to take us over the top! If your name is not in the list below let us know so we can blow your horn. And if you meant to do something before now, it’s never too late to press the button below.

Maggie Beaumont | Jennifer Bennett | Raven Bishop | Sara Blackwelder | Diane Cacciato | Jo Carson | Chas Clifton | Rebecca Crystal | Anne Dalrymple | Mason Davenport | Dana Doerksen | Veretta Dye | Hugh Eckert | Holli Emore | Naomi Fine | Julius Goodley | Tom Gordon | Gordon & Lora Green | Helene Grogan | Bob Hargreaves | Catie Holstein | Van Hurst | Wes Isley | Deb Jung | Jeffrey Keefer | David Dashifen Kees | Carol Kirk | Eridanus Kummerow | Karyne Kuzawski | Lawrence Lerner | Phil McCarty | Margaret Meggs | DeAnna Mikeworth | Tracie Mooneyham | Aline O’Brien | Christin Olson | Willow Oringderff | Ron Padron | David Pollard | Erika Rivertree | Ryan Ridpath | Troy Robinson | Ronald Schaefer | Charlie Sequoia | Polly Springhorn | Kirk Thomas | Votaries Alumni Circle | Scott Waterhouse | Margo Wolfe | Jenny Zappala |

You Are Not Alone

First, you are not alone. When crisis strikes, grassroots organizations lead the way, like Cherry Hill Seminary. Driven by people who understand that in times of need, we rely on each other.

Second, we have something no one can take from you. Cherry Hill Seminary is deeply committed to providing transformative education so that you can provide competent and compassionate spiritual support and leadership to others. We value community care, mutual support, and partnerships.

Third, community care is about coming together to build something sustainable, healing, and empowering for everyone involved. Cherry Hill Seminary has been here for everyone for more than 20 years, and we are in it for the long haul.

Your financial contributions each year make up about twenty percent of our budget. Those gifts take root in fertile soil at CHS, where students learn to think theologically, work effectively in their communities, excel academically, and lead others in their spiritual journeys.

Will you do your part this spring? You can make an outright gift of any amount, or you can let us know of an amount you intend to give, and when (that’s what we call a pledge). We also have occasionally received gifts of stock, or inclusion in your estate planning. We welcome all of it, year-round. But our spring appeal helps us plan for all our programs for the year, so we ask you at this turn of the wheel.

We are only $1000 away from our goal of $20,000 for the year! Your gifts tell us that you want CHS to thrive, that we need to keep on being there for the entire Pagan and earth-focused community.

Click here to make a contribution, or here to make a pledge for a gift any time until the end of 2025.

Thank you for making it possible for Cherry Hill Seminary to support and inspire you to nurture others through spiritual care and leadership.

Shifting the Balance

Help us shift the balance towards an ever-stronger, ever better Cherry Hill Seminary.

At the autumn equinox, Cherry Hill Seminary pauses to reflect on this year. Even in these uncertain times, we have flourished. For example, thanks to your investment in quality education we were able to:

  • Pioneer a Pagan SpiDir (Spiritual Direction Certificate) cohort, which began their two-year journey towards offering their own services as a spiritual director.
  • Launch Coming to the Center, an online interview series with thought leaders, scholars, & experts in Pagan spirituality.
  • Engage a consultant to review our entire curriculum, map learning outcomes, and develop a guide for ongoing management of our programs.
  • Initiate our search for a new academic dean as Dr. Candace Kant prepares for retirement.

Giving is a fundamental part of showing up for the CHS community and showing others that investing in quality education and transformative spiritual growth is essential to our future. By making a contribution, you become part of our students’ fearless learning.

By asking you to give, we hope to show you that we are serious about being a force for good, serving the spiritual needs of those around us, bringing healing where we may, and developing the next generation of Pagan leaders.

We are thankful for community members, just like you, who understand the value of quality education and how it can shape the future for the better. Two generous donors have offered to match every dollar raised between now and Samhain, up to $10,000 USD! That means that your gift will automatically be doubled.

Your gift will put us in a stronger position to add the academic dean’s new salary to our 2022 budget.
Your contribution, of any size, ensures that CHS is around to provide quality education for years to come.

Anything Can Happen: Let’s Make it Good!

Anything can happen in 2021…

We survived and thrived in 2020, despite all the challenges before us. Not just as a center of learning, but we rallied to those challenges as spiritual beings with an appetite to know more, be more, and do more!

And now? In April, our very first SpiDir (Spiritual Direction Certificate) cohort will begin their two-year journey towards offering their own services as a spiritual director or companion. This summer we’ll begin Coming to the Center, an exciting program which launches in the summer featuring live online interviews with notable experts on wide-ranging topics. We’ve held symposia jointly with the University of South Carolina since 2013, bringing together scholars, students and the public around sacred lands, religion and the environment, and white supremacy. We believe we can do so much more this year, with your support.

After all, Cherry Hill Seminary is now well into our second decade as the only graduate and continuing education program of its kind in the world, a surprising milestone for a Pagan organization. How has that happened? Not without a great deal of hard work, patience, and a lot of people envisioning a world where we are on equal footing with others in the ministry professions.

So why not make this year –2021– one to remember, one that inspires us, a year of bold, visionary action?

Hypatia of Alexandria, the guardian ancestor of Cherry Hill Seminary, has been a model for fearless learning since the third century of this era. Hypatia taught her students to pursue knowledge and live with the integrity demanded by a rapidly-changing society. This is why we each year we invite you to celebrate March 15, International Hypatia Day, by honoring our spiritual ancestor with a contribution to CHS in support of her passion for excellence in education.

Over the years, we’ve thrown Hypatia parties, held drawings for prizes, and in various ways invited the world to become part of our Seminary family with a gift (or a pledge to give sometime during 2021). Thanks for the memories pictured in the photos here!

Will you support Cherry Hill Seminary with a contribution today? Then perhaps you will tweet or post what you’ve done with one of the memes found below? The world loves stories of generosity and goodwill, after all. (Don’t forget to link back to this page.)

Most importantly, anything can happen in 2021, so make it good, starting with your contribution to Cherry Hill Seminary.

Feel free to share the images below on Facebook or Instagram!

Download Images (.jpg)

Download Animations (.mp4)