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FRIENDS OF SRAVASTI ABBEY MEETING NOTES (en Español)
DECEMBER 6-9, 2007

Desired Outcomes of the Meeting

  • Accomplish all activities with the Dharma in mind
  • Welcome new participants and share information about interests and skills among us
  • Increase knowledge of the current situation with plans to build a monastic residence  for the Abbey
  • Develop the plan to invite generosity and enact the capital campaign

Motivation for this meeting: To deepen and expand our own generosity practice in order to benefit everyone as we do this planning and inviting generosity.

Participants:
  • Ven. Thubten Chodron – Abbess of Sravasti Abbey
  • Venerable Tarpa – Abbey Action Team, facilitator of building the monastic residence
  • Venerable Semkye – Abbey Action Team; manages existing infrastructure
  • Barbara McDaniel – Abbey Action Team and FOSA, Venerable’s assistant, facilitates Inviting Generosity (IG) and Public Relations (PR)
  • Kevin Conlin – FOSA co-chair and Abbey Action Team - database, office and grounds.
  • Kathleen Herron –  FOSA co-chair, helps facilitate meetings, willing to assist with the campaign
  • Jo and Pat Simpson – Manage the Monastic Hall construction
  • Tanya Lasuk – Website (5 years)
  • Cheryl Gipson – skills and experience in non-profit fundraising through technology
  • Carl Willmott – Abbey Action Team and works with building and grounds maintenance
  •  Dianne Pratt – FOSA secretary, transcribes teachings
  • Cathleen O’Connor – environmental activist- Heart Shrine Relic Tour and capital campaigns
  • Deb Walker – green building research, planning the building process
  • Alec Sloman – assists with many projects, audio and video for Public Relations

Frederick Browne, Cheryl Harrison, Nancy Boroughs and Tracy Morgan arrived Saturday and didn't get to participate in the introductions.

The Abbey Vision – Venerable Thubten Chodron
The vision is to build this monastery for all sentient beings, as a place to practice, study and transmit the Dharma; to create peace in the hearts and minds of all beings in all three times.

We need larger facilities to do so.  We are full to overflowing and have had packed programs this whole year. We need expertise, finances, adequate time, proper planning and a good motivation for the long term benefit for all, beyond ourselves and this world.  

The building of the residence is our Dharma practice; it is not just building a residence. It will create merit. So as we volunteer let’s cultivate cooperation, trust, reliability, consistency and kindness

The Building Plan
Pat Simpson: Sravasti Abbey is growing very fast now and we need to know how to support this.  We need to build the first monastic residence. The planning group has met with the architect a number of times and the preliminary plans are done. In building, we will be guided by the value of interdependence and build with awareness of all those around us, including insects and animals.

Building Phases of the Monastic Hall
  1. Infrastructure – an all-weather access road; plan for power; drill for water, septic systems.  At this same time, we need to remodel the kitchen.
  2. Then we will put in the building foundation
  3. Next the building will be closed in - Roof and siding, electricity/ plumbing/walls
  4. The last phase is finishing the interiors and the landscaping.
    We will plan and build the retreat and teacher cabins later.

Venerable Tarpa: Current projected costs are at $116,000 for the first phase.  She has done a lot of research and will continue to investigate using green building materials and methods.

We want the building to be cost effective, efficient and healthy for us and the environment, these are three equal priorities.

Inviting Generosity
Barbara McDaniel: Handed out a draft case statement for the capital campaign. The cost of the monastic residence, kitchen remodel and retreat cabins is projected at approximately $800,000.

As background, Barb explained that since 2003 about one million dollars has been offered to Sravasti Abbey. The Abbey has received about $175,000 as of October 31, 2007. 

Breaking down the sources of donations since 2003: 5% of income comes from Abbey visitors. General donations equal 50%, direct mail 3% and monthly giving 7%. Retreat registration 1%. Singapore offers 10%, teaching and retreats in US generate 16% (leaving 8% that is not catagorized).

Tanya Lasuk talked about how important Sravasti Abbey is to Westerners, as a place where complete, true Dharma is taught in English by a qualified teacher. Therefore our stakeholders are all who wants Dharma in the West. All of us need to develop and model the Dharma within ourselves for this to succeed.

Overview of Campaign Activities
Cheryl Gipson:
We need to re-emphasize the underpinning value of generosity. All campaigns start internally.  We need to plan and think about it. We do accurate accounting including the building and operating costs.

We meet first with those who care and are thinking about capacity building within FOSA.  How can we sustain our structure and expand the mission?

In campaign literature we emphasize the unique qualities of Sravasti, the quality of training for monastics and lay people with Venerable Chodron, and how these will affect the spread of the Dharma in the US forever. 

We can make our own karmic connection to this effort; and assist others to make one too. At some point, we will need to have a Development Director .For now, if we streamline our systems, even a small group can do a lot.  (Cheryl has since graciously accepted the position of campaign manager)

It’s important to care personally and spiritually about each donor.  It’s a monastic precept to use the donation as the donor directs. 

We will put the names of all the donors in the monastic residence not to praise them, but to remind the monastics that they rely on the generosity of the donors.

REPORTS

Volunteers – Venerable Semkye had an easier time with many more volunteers. The process of tracking and using volunteers effectively is working well. We are trying to be a bit more creative about getting volunteers in the winter, when there are fewer outdoor projects, for other activities like transcription and inviting generosity support work. Many people are volunteering consistently now.

The Four Requisites – Venerable Semkye began by saying "the wonderful, generous food offerings continue to humble us." The community grew by three more and the food offering folks just adjusted. There are a number of local people helping sew the robes. Thanks to Tracy for managing this so well. 

The best question to ask monastics is what do they need?

Since Ven. Semkye is a monastic, she no longer can be the chair person for the four requisites. We need a lay person to step in.

Kathleen continues to investigate the medical insurance options for monastics and is working with Kathleen Aguilar on a survey of western monastics on this issue.

Financial Report – Finance chair Leah Kosik wasn’t at the meeting but sent reports (activity year to date, statement of financial position, restricted funds). [pdf format, you need acrobat reader]

The Website – Tanya has worked on the website for the past 5 years and we are so grateful.  It continues to be revised and updated. There was some discussion regarding utilizing the website effectively for the capital campaign.  

INVITING GENEROCITY STRATEGY
Cheryl Gipson moderated.

First we met as a large group to further strategize our goal to raise a million dollars. We agreed to use the four phases of building with the capital campaign and keep the same theme throughout the campaign to raise the money at about 250K per phase. When the capital campaign is done we will continue support with annual campaigns providing such needs as utilities and food.

This monastic community has very specific purpose. This isn’t a retreat center or a dharma center. When guests come, they are temporarily joining the community.

We will use a grass roots campaign to help every one establish a karmic connection to the Abbey and we will be completely transparent in our financial statements. For example, if we borrow from existing funds, we will show how much. One of the goals is to continue project from begining to the end without stopping between phases, although we have naturat stopping places if we need them.

We developed a chart to see the current estimate(target), an extended estimate to include contigencies (stretch goal) for each phase. We added a third column to show the cumulative fundraising goal at each phase.
Target    Stretch goal Date goal Cumulative
Infrastructure and Kitchen
$116,000 + $20,000 = $136,000
$163,200 April, 2008  $163,200
Foundation
$175,660  
$210,800 July, 2008 $374,000
Building
$175,660 
$210,800 August, 2008 $584,800
Finishing
$175,660 
$210,000 March, 2009 $795,600
$663,000 $795,600     

We worked in small groups on four topics: Major Donors, Campaign Materials and Website, Building, Case Statement and then regrouped to report and discuss.

Donor group – Kevin, Barbara, Bill, Dianne and Kathleen went through the database to identify major donors to contact. Later, Laurel (a volunteer with fundraising experience) will do a major donor training for those of us contacting people.  We will focus on major donors and the email and website/internet first.We looked at the content of the campaign, the planning, timing and strategies.

We recommend that we use the Four Phases of building as a metaphor:

  • infrastructure
  • foundation
  • building
  • finishing
We will prioritize and use our core strengths (focus on major donors and email/website).  We also discussed house parties; opportunities to fund part of the buildings, a room etc. We made commitments to take on portions of this strategy and carry it out.

Materials/Website group – Frederick, Nancy, Alec, and Tanya worked on Logo- Letterhead- Banner. We reviewed materials currently being used for inviting generosity: Brochure, PowerPoint, Website, Program / Events-news, Appeals (direct mail).  This group planned how to create support through materials for Major Gifts, house parties, email/internet etc. We will hire a professional designer for this part and Web design and graphics will be due by February 1st. 

This group also made work commitments to carry out the strategies.The group discussed graphics, logo etc. We hope to brand the Monastic Residence campaign with new colors or changing the color emphasis and type face and new web site.
 
We may need a new giving page from e-Tapestry, our database service.  Kevin recommends we buy a new page on e-Tapestry for this. We can set up a separate web site or subdomain on the current web server.

The small group recommends we highlight FOSA's role by creating the campaign on a new FOSA website. We do this as a step towards people understanding FOSA’s roles. Adding the FOSA aspect will help in making the campaign look different from the Abbey materials. It will also emphasize that FOSA is raising the funds for the Abbey and the Abbey receives all the funds.

The history of Buddhist monasteries started when a wealthy donor said to the Buddha, “I want to give your monks a place to live.” This represents the relationship between the monastics and the lay people. 

The Building Group – We hope the cash flow (Leah and Jo will manage that) and building stages flow together. 

The kitchen will also be remodeled within this plan. Carl is already working on the kitchen remodel plan. However, he will be gone for a while this winter.

Ven. Tarpa is getting more information on ecologically oriented (green) materials all the time.  The building group are finding local builders interested in green construction.  For example, Sally from the City Planning came to share information on green building based on her experience building her own house. She also gave us names of local green builders.  We will share our intent to do green healthy building in the capital campaign.

Ven. Tarpa suggests Mahaprajapati as a possible name for the building.  She was Buddha’s stepmother and led 500 women to be the first women to request Bhikshuni ordination from the Buddha. Ven. Semkye heartily agrees.  A few thought it might be hard to learn/pronounce.

Deb did more research on possible materials for walls that are energy efficient. There was some discussion on using materials and techniques which prevent insect infestations since we would not harm any animals including carpenter ants. 

Case Statement Group – Cheryl Harrison and Cathleen. The case statement is the foundation for everything else.  The task is getting it into one page. Cheryl and Cathleen will have a draft by next Sunday, December 16th.  The working campaign theme is " 1000 gifts for 1000 years of Dharma". Barbara emphasized that we want to invite many, many, many people to donate at all level.
 
Those at this meeting pledged a total of $34,000 to the campaign along with many practice commitments for the success of the campaign.

We dedicate all the merit from this activity to peace and freedom for all.

 
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