2025 UUA Certification Report

While this report is confined to the data received during the congregational certification process itself, we know that there is a great deal of informational need across the whole span of our shared Unitarian Universalist tradition. Information grounds us in an objective sense of what is so that we can make an honest assessment of our position on a variety of fronts and build courageous strategies for the future.

Some of the data that our stakeholders may need, including detailed tracking of staffing patterns and long-term trends in professional ministry, may be supported by complimentary or separate processes over the course of the 2025-26 fiscal year. As it is presented here, this is a snapshot of the data we have about congregations themselves rather than an in-depth exploration of the individual people, either staff or members, within those congregations. This data can’t, for instance, tell you what Board Presidents are looking for from the UUA at this time or what kind of staff-sharing solutions are working for our administrative professionals in certain regions. What we can do is point one another toward shared realities, paths to interpretation and available resources.

As of this time, the UUA serves 1,081 Unitarian Universalist congregations and communities. The total served has remained stable with very little change since the last certification process was completed. These communities served include Member Congregations, Emerging Congregations, Covenanting Communities, International Congregations and Multi-Site Communities. The mere listing of those above categories is enough to show us that the definition of a congregation or UU community is continuing to evolve and expand among us. Our intention going forward is to count the full range of communities the UUA serves while maintaining solid year-over-year comparisons over time. While you will see much more about that effort in the report below, for full transparency, you can view the detailed information on changes to communities served here: community changelog (opens in new tab).

Of course, it is impossible to interpret this data without considering the impact of the larger social and political environment around us. In a time of great societal disruption and mounting risk to both our institutions and the practice of progressive religion as a whole, the role of Unitarian Universalism in civil society remains essential and the unique function of the UUA itself to hold the heart of the faith while our congregations and communities practice that faith every day is as important as it has ever been.

Among the outgrowths from this tumultuous moment in American and religious history, this year’s data shows an uptick in the number of active social justice teams in our congregations and in participation in social justice activities across the board. Notably, reported congregational conflict appears to be down since 2024. We also see a decline in congregations who report that their ministries are being driven forward by a shared understanding of their mission. From those paired metrics, one gets the sense that Unitarian Universalists are reacting to the world around us with great faithfulness but somewhat scattered strategy. Whenever possible, we are working to point our agitation outward instead of inward, seeking tools that can sustain us along the way.

While this year’s data does not tell a sunny story for easy times, continuing longer term trends that put increased pressure on congregational budgets, staff and systems, it also does not show any newly precipitous decline, nor does it show universal membership decline. In the last year, 446 congregations saw increases in membership while 211 saw two consecutive years of growth, and 81 quite impressively grew for three consecutive years. Likewise, 247 Congregations saw increases to RE Enrollment and 350 Congregations saw increases to Non-Member Friends. While we don’t currently have a developed analysis of trends in these growing communities, we are gathering best practices, best encapsulated for Religious Education in the Fall issue of the UU World magazine and in the popular new course recently introduced to the online resources of the UU Institute, Tending Congregational Life (opens in new tab).

In essence, our metrics this year are largely going as they have gone in recent memory. The trend lines are not changed, nor is the persistence of places of real growth and vitality. Most importantly, there are pockets of strategic innovation and strategic courage amid the change.

Note On Religious Education Enrollment and Support

Among the many metrics you will see in this report, I want to draw your attention to the Religious Education enrollment numbers, both as illustrative of trends and as a reminder of how easily we can find our data skewed by incorrect reporting.

You’ll note that religious education enrollment continues a downward trend over the course of the last ten years, with a decrease of about 2% in 2025, with a notable dip emerging from the pandemic and relatively stable numbers since the very large decrease in the 2021 data reflecting the seismic impact of the pandemic.

Data watchers will remember that we initially reported a significant uptick of 16% last year, before retracting that analysis when we realized that misreported data threw off the numbers significantly. We continue to dig through the data as diligently as possible to catch such mistakes before they make it into the final report and know that our leaders partner with us as we seek to make an imperfect tool more useful and clearer each year. Connection, not perfection. We will keep refining both the report and the processes that produce it as we go forward.

As with some of our other data including congregational membership itself, we’re aware that some of our shared practices about religious education tracking are rapidly shifting all around us. Within congregations, the way we track enrolled and non-enrolled participants continues to evolve. Trying to respond to these changing realities, this year we introduced the following question, “How many non-enrolled children and youth under 18 do you estimate have been involved in your congregation's ministries in the past year who are not enrolled in your RE program?” You will see that reflected in the graphic presentations below.

We also want to be clear that UUA executive leadership is in early conversations with the leadership of LREDA (Liberal Religious Educators of America) about the outsized--and sometimes devastating--impacts that financial and membership dynamics are having on religious educators and religious education. We hope that we will be able to work together to get the data we need to truly understand the trends in, for example, how many congregations have reduced or eliminated professional religious educator roles, and more importantly, to really understand the stories that the data tells so we can take action and develop strategies together and ensure the vitality of UU faith formation across the generations into the future. Please note that religious education is a whole-community practice that extends far beyond specific enrollment in Sunday morning children’s or youth programming. This is an area where real innovation is possible, but only alongside the religious professionals and dedicated volunteers who reimagine new ways together.

Ongoing Trends in Finance and Assets

This is a time of significant stress on operating expenses and surprising growth in the financial infrastructure of many of our institutions. On the one hand, the number of individual and family pledges made to our congregations has gone down from 106,209 to 81,941 over the last decade. The numbers for 2025 show no significant change from 2024. As ever, we should not overlook the significant concern inherent in such a decline, nor the strain it puts on our donors and budgets alike. And yet, average pledges continue to go up, from $1,458 in 2014 to $2,134 in 2025. Even as the total numbers of pledgers have gone down, average pledges continue to increase. Note that we do not currently take a median number in this data, so we can’t currently describe the distribution of giving. Individual congregations should be able to access that inside their own data in order to understand how reliant they are on the pledges of a perhaps small but increasingly generous number of high-level donors.

Meanwhile, UU Congregational endowments and reserves continue to grow at a strikingly healthy rate, now totaling 1.2 billion and up 58% from 2016 while long-term debt continues to drop. We really should not be considering the strain on operating budgets entirely outside of the context of any growing assets that congregations may have, including our endowments, reserve funds and building-use potential.

We also see a downtick in property ownership, which mirrors what we find across different denominations and religious affiliations. While we don’t have specific data to track it in this report, we do understand that nationwide trends show congregations selling and/or repurposing their buildings. Sometimes this is a mission-based decision. Sometimes it is about a clear financial need. Either can be born from exactly the courageous strategy we endorse here.

The Size of our Communities

Does the actual number of people gathered in a community matter when we consider these trends? Does a particular size of congregation create more resilience in these tumultuous times? To help us begin answering those questions and “cutting the data” for specific groups, we've added several charts and graphs to this report to start exploring what patterns or trends we're seeing across seven different size groupings. It’s important to note that this new analysis only looks at member congregations, for which we have accurate member counts for, and does not include covenanted communities or other groups for which we may not have accurate data over time.

An essential statistic is this – over half of our member congregations have less than 100 individual members. We should not lose track of the fact that small, potentially deeply connected and relationally accountable communities are the bread-and-butter of our movement. Promoting health and vitality in small church is an essential part of the ongoing work of our UUA Congregational Life Staff and of the faith as a whole.

It is also important to note that while most of our congregations are small (under 150), most of our members are in larger congregations 150+), with changing and important metrics for large congregations (500+) as well. Large congregations total 3.1% of our member congregations but hold 18.5% of our membership. Likewise, nearly 20% of all participants in UU religious education nationwide were involved in RE at a large UU congregation.

We hope to continue exploring what the data tells us about all seven of these size categories and considering the unique gifts, challenges and specific needs presenting across the congregational size spectrum at this time.

Prep for next Certification Process

We want to offer our deep gratitude to those leaders who undertook the labor to make the 2024-25 Data Certification process a success. Our 2025-26 Certification Process will begin in January 2026. We hope for yet more data to continue growing our longitudinal picture and narrative resources for the faith. How do we move faithfully toward the future of our congregations and communities? With clarity, strategy and authentic examination of what has been, what currently is, and what becomes possible when we work together.