Seven Oaks 2025 Matching Challenge

May 12, 2025

Dear Friends,

I’m writing you today from the grounds of the Seven Oaks Retreat Center, where the irises and peonies are blooming! Stephen Gold, IMCW Board President, and I have an urgent request that we hope you will respond to by the June 30 deadline. With the purchase of this beautiful property last year, IMCW began the happy task of reviving and renovating the space to provide a much-needed home base in the Mid-Atlantic for residential meditation retreats and contemplative practice/study offerings. So far, we’ve hosted over thirty retreats on this beautiful 120 acres of land in the Blue Ridge Mountains outside of Charlottesville, Va. If you’ve been with us on retreat here, you know how special this place is and how lucky we are to be stewards of the land and entrusted with its next incarnation.

To date, we’ve:

• begun working with Bushman|Dreyfus Architects in Charlottesville to conduct surveys and produce site plans that will determine the full scope of our final vision
• engaged Siteworks landscape architects to develop an integrated vision of how the land around the Center will support the overall retreat experience, while also supporting native flora and fauna and limiting harmful environmental impacts
• explored various staffing models that allow for a residential live-work experience on-site
• hired an amazing retreat center director to lead us through this transition

As we prepare for the next phase of our long-range plan for Seven Oaks, which includes addressing critical accessibility issues and expanding facilities for single rooms, we’re reaching out with a tangible request for support. We’ve received a generous $300,000 matching gift to strengthen the infrastructure required to move forward with this long-range plan, and are dependent on our wider community of practitioners to meet this challenge by June 30th.

Specifically, your donation toward this matching gift will allow us to:

• start the next phase of the building and landscape architectural review process, culminating in visual renderings of our project
• complete work on the baseline ADA review recommendations 
• upgrade our registration system
• hire a full-time staff person to support community outreach and development operations

We know the transformative power of residential retreat to pierce the illusion of separation that pervades our everyday lives and awaken our hearts to what is true. A recent retreatant wrote, “This retreat has allowed me to reset my frayed nervous system and connect with the abundance of good (and neutral!) that exists alongside suffering.” Given our current times, we’re committed to this ambitious project now more than ever, and grateful for the trust and enthusiasm of our seed money benefactors.

Now we need your help to make this a reality. Every dollar you donate today will be matched by our generous donor, and every penny truly counts. Please consider all the ways you might be able to give, knowing we’re sincerely grateful for your generosity.

In service to all,