• Are you a spiritual innovator—a religious professional or a lay leader—who wants to start a new community but you don’t know where to begin?
• Did you just launch a project and feel like you need colleagues who understand your joys and frustrations?
• Do you feel a yearning to build a local community but get overwhelmed by the idea of raising money and budgeting?
• Are you committed to seeking spiritual growth, liberation, and healing for communities in your midst?

Welcome. You are in the right place.

The UU Cultivators Collaborative is designed to support those innovators and teams who are ready to realize their wider vision for Unitarian Universalism with tailored support at critical junctures along the way.

Understanding the changing religious landscape and urgencies before us, we are eager to support the spiritual innovators working in congregations, affiliated communities and new start-ups who are rising to the challenge of transforming Unitarian Universalism into a faith that more closely embodies the Beloved Community we envision.

UUA Partnership with Beloved

The Unitarian Universalist Association is partnering with Beloved to support spiritual innovators who hunger for advancing our UU values of Love and Justice in the world.

Beloved is a national network of spiritual leaders spanning denominations, locations, and leadership styles. Their mission is to inspire, support, and nourish spiritual leaders as they create and sustain new faith-full spaces of sacred belonging.

In partnership with Beloved, The UU Cultivators Collaborative program will provide customized support and encouragement for innovators from historically underserved communities through a cohort model. Participants will be part of a cohort of mutual support that builds collective knowledge, connects them to expert mentors and resources for developing and testing prototypes. It will guide them throughout this critical stage and beyond.

(To learn more about how we came to this collaboration, visit our background page.)

Cohort of Spiritual Innovators

The UUA and Beloved are excited to host a cohort of spiritual innovators (both religious professionals and lay leaders) beginning March 2024 for a one-year intensive followed by a co-created alumni experience.

As a spiritual innovator, you are eligible for the cohort if:

• you identify as a religious professional or lay leader
• you are creating an innovative space of sacred belonging
• your community/project is somewhere between pre-development (ready to launch within 1 year) and 3 years post-launch
  • and/or the trajectory of your project has been affected by the pandemic
  • and/or you are pivoting
• you feel drawn to and aligned with our UU and Beloved values (see below)
• you identify as a member of an underserved group
• your innovative community meets the spiritual needs of people from cultures and life-stages that have been, and are, historically underserved

The cohort will gather and meet online monthly for 90-minutes of sharing, reflecting, and learning. Topics for our learning include constituency building, active listening, and community organizing. We will also collaborate on the learning together as we ask, “what do we want to learn and what is the wisdom each of us can share?"

You will be matched with a companion with whom you can connect and learn between our monthly sessions. In addition to our monthly online gatherings, we will convene with other cohorts for skill building intensives on topics such as budgeting, resource mobilization, and storytelling.

The cohort will gather in person for a restful retreat with our full network; this convening will be annual, and you’ll be invited to attend each year.

Each member of the cohort will be asked to pay a registration fee of $250 for the entire year. The Unitarian Universalist Association is underwriting all other costs associated with the program for UU-aligned participants.

Cohort Application

The current application period has closed.