Alternative Giving
Alternative Giving 2025
Planting Seeds for Justice All Year and Around the World
Each of these local and international choices is carefully vetted for bringing real change and for reaching groups that are often ignored or hidden.
Review the range of options and select those you wish to support. Donations accepted through December 31, 2025.
A Reflection
Adapted from Rabbi Ari Lorge’s Yom Kippur Sermon
Consider giving in light of the local and global changes of 2025. For many, but not all, it feels like the end of a period of stability. Some feel as though we are at the precipice of an increasingly disorienting and threatening change. Familiar structures are crumbling.
Perhaps our perspective is affected by the fact that this era of abundance and security has been due to the sacrifices of our forebears who invested their lives and fortunes to build institutions that supported justice and ultimately protected the rights of more and more – women, immigrants, people of color, queer people, people with disabilities, and other marginalized persons. Our forebears planted in tears, but with a vision.
Are you a child of that harvest? Many of us relaxed into the security and abundance that had been created. But this time of harvest is harshly changed into a more barren landscape. We need to move from a harvest mentality to a planting mentality. Now is the time to replant dignity and morality. We must intentionally sow the change to be appreciated by future generations.
Psalm 126: 5-6, “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.”
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How It Works
Pick Your Project(s)
Explore the projects below or through the PowerPoint presentation and identify a project or multiple projects that speak to you.
Each project is assigned a number that corresponds with the fund listed in both the online portal and on the order form.
Donate Online
Use the link below to donate online by credit or debit card. A dropdown menu will give you the option to “Click on an Alternative Giving project.”
Enter how much you would like to give to the selected fund. If several, choose “+Another Fund” and enter the amount to donate. Repeat as needed, then enter your credit/debit card information and submit your donation.
Donate By Check
You may donate by personal or bank check. Please download, print, and complete the order form below to allocate your funds. Checks should be made payable to BHPC with “Alternative Gifts” in the memo line. Please mail checks with the tallied order form to:
Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church
6601 Bradley Blvd
Bethesda, MD 20817
Share With Others
Giving to one of these projects is a great way to honor others – Healthcare workers, teachers, leaders, and loved ones.
If your gift was in honor of someone, let them know by printing a gift card to give them.
Text To Give
For even more convenience, you can text “BHPC AGO [Amount]” to 73256 to give! For example, to give $120 to fund, text “BHPC AGO 120”. Include spaces between with no dollar sign or quotations.
Please share this information with friends and family!
Recommended Organizations/Projects
1. A Wider Circle
A Wider Circle’s Mission is to end poverty for one individual and one family after another.
They provide basic needs, comprehensive workforce readiness, wellness programming, long-term wraparound support, and address racial disparities and inequities.
Donations support family needs in Anacostia, DC.
2. Summer Mission Trip 2026
This coming summer, BHPC youth and adults will work together to do hands-on service projects. There will be opportunities to learn together about justice and peace while serving communities in need.
In 2026, the plan is to travel to a site where indigenous people live in the U.S. to partner is ways that will help open eyes, minds, and hearts of people in both groups regarding cultural differences.
These trips are faith formation in action.
3. Village Health Teams
Buyobo leads the way with fully functioning Village Health Teams that are a model for rural health care in Uganda.
Their success is boosted by your donations that help provide protective gear, clean water, essential latrines, rural motorcycle ambulances, and on-going training.
These health workers are VOLUNTEERS.
4. Feeding Families at Faith Presbyterian
The Ward 7 and Ward 8 community members deserve reliable sources of healthy food, so we are putting our emphasis on supporting Faith Presbyterian’s Feeding Families efforts to provide excellent nutrition as well as nutrition education.
BHPC volunteers help distribute bags of groceries on four Saturdays a year.
5. New Story Leadership – The PHOENIX PLAN – A NEW STORY FOR ALL
NSL brings young Israeli and Palestinian leaders together to write a new story of peace, justice, and shared future.
Through the Phoenix Plan framework, alumni began leading the way in 2023 toward what comes after conflict: structured steps for reconciliation, accountability, and shared dignity.
For more details, see www.newstoryleadership.org
6. Al Ahli Arab Hospital – Renewed Hope in Gaza City
Through your prayers and dollars, the work of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, and the hospital staff, reconstruction of the walls has begun, and a new entrance sign has been installed to welcome patients.
Until the doors are open, doctors and nurses use mobile units to treat patients. As the violence continues, these efforts offer a renewed sense of hope and dignity to the people of Gaza.
Photo Credit: Photo courtesy of the American Friends of the Archdiocese of Jerusalem.
7. Asia Pacific American Legal Resource Center (APALRC)
The Washington DC based APALRC protects the civil and legal rights of local, low-income Asian migrants.
Programming includes community legal education, individual representation, and systemic advocacy. $100 helps bring justice to this community in these times of political change.
8. GenOUT Choir for LGBTQ+ & Allies
GenOUT is the DC area’s only vocal ensemble for LGBTQ+ and allied youth.
It offers these young people some visibility, a collective voice, and a way to connect that voice to the larger community.
Donations for GenOUT support a sense of welcome, belonging, and joy. $100 supports music lessons and other expenses.
9. Ethiopia/Oromia – Educating Girls
This innovative program reached its 21st year in 2025. Many girls were rescued from early marriage.
By providing mentors, stipends, and community support for 15 girls at each site, REAL has kept them all safe from violence and rampant conflict-driven rape.
Well-educated girls are the key to a better future. $50 per scholarship share; $375 supports a mentor.
10. Court Appointed Special Advocate (Voices for Children Montgomery)
CASAs are volunteers trained to serve as voices for one of our most valuable populations: abused and neglected children.
Voices for Children Montgomery’s mission is to prepare and support these advocates for children in Montgomery County foster care to ensure their placement in safe, permanent homes.
$250 trains one CASA volunteer for one child in foster care. Donations in any amount help.
11. Asia–Forman Christian College in Lahore, Pakistan
Support for women’s scholarships at Forman Christian College contributes to peace in a volatile part of the world.
At FCCollege, Muslims and Christians, rich and poor, rural and urban, men and women study together in mutual respect. In 2023/24, Bradley Hills continued support for nine women (5 Muslims/4 Christians).
Tuition is approximately $2,800 per year. 100% of donations go directly to benefit scholarship recipients and occasionally to assist with special requirements for rural women: travel, lodging, or language support.
12. Presbyterian Disaster Assistance
Completed kits allow PDA to respond quickly and effectively to natural disasters, including hurricanes, fires, earthquakes, flooding, and other extreme weather events.
In recent years, more than 100,000 kits have been distributed annually, both here and abroad. Kits that members assemble bring hope following disaster. For example, $75 = one clean up kit.
13. Friends Club
Friends Club is a daytime home for several men in the early to mid-stages of Alzheimer’s for up to four days per week.
Activities are engaging, mentally stimulating, and emotionally supportive. The hours spent at Friends Club are welcomed by caregivers, who appreciate the respite.
$115 covers one day of activities and lunch for one attendee.
14. Queerly Gathered
Queerly Gathered was co-founded in 2022 by BHPC’s own Matt Nabinger with Cali Bronkema as an affirming worshipping community for LGBTQ+ and their loved ones.
People who have been badly hurt by the church due to their sexual orientation or gender identity are finding a safe re-entry point into Christian community.
Recent political changes show the importance of Queerly Gathered in a world that feels less welcoming. Your support makes such a difference.
15. My Dorm Room
My Dorm Room’s mission is to foster a positive college experience for first-generation, low-income students. The program provides qualifying students with a $250 spending limit with which they can select what they need from a curated registry of essential dorm items.
They can go on to their dorm rooms with confidence that they will have what they need. This reduces anxiety for the student and the parents. A gift to this program helps alleviate this “invisible inequity” that first-generation students face when they start college. Contributing $250 or any portion of that amount will help students buy their essential dorm items. In 2023, 28 students were served. In 2024, 55 were served.
16. Kids First-Ortho, Mexico
Teams of orthopedic surgeons live out a mission to treat children in Guanajuato, Mexico.
The volunteer medical teams travel from the United States each summer to perform life-changing reconstructive surgeries. Each trip, they correct limb deformities for an average of 150 children FREE OF CHARGE.
$100 helps offset costs of casts, crutches, bandaging, and more.
17. Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church Nursery School Scholarships – New to Alternative Giving
Each child is given the tools and guidance needed to develop a lifelong love of learning and a strong connection to nature. Families who are having difficulty affording the cost of tuition may apply for scholarship assistance.
Bradley Hills Nursery School does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, or national origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, or scholarship program.
A gift of $75 or $100 or more will help meet the needs of the scholarship program for this terrific nursery school.
18. Alternative Giving General Fund
Not sure which choice to make? Donations to this fund will be allocated to the projects that have received the least financial support.
In this way, donors can feel confident that each well-vetted project will receive some degree of support.
