Future Plans : As a result of the flood and a shortage of funds in general, resources are desperately needed to repair and rehabilitate the prayer hall, kitchen, dining hall, clinic and dormitory. These facilities represent the major infrastructure for much of the work that is done by our Monastery. With this in mind, our plan is to seek one-time grants to cover our needs. The approaches we plan on using include:

• Working with the local community to seek donations for helping to revitalize the complex;
• Having our students/orphans help us to paint and improve our complex. Since this represents their home, they are most willing to help with this process; and
• Continuing to seek donor/private support from organizations that feel that the work we are doing is important and worth investing in. Once again, we would welcome either large or small grants from interested groups – any amount would be greatly appreciated.

 

C. NEXT STEPS

Based on the information provided above, you will note that we will be trying everything we can in the near future to help improve our complex and our programs. Keeping in mind that it is important to become as self-reliant as we can, we have also come up with a number of ideas/recommendations that we will try to implement in an effort to reduce our annual costs. This, we feel, will allow our programs to remain strong in the years to come.

In the section that follows, we have attached a list of budget items/categories for which we are seeking support. Our request to potential funders is that they look at the list and identify what they might be interested in supporting. We know that different donors/funders have different priorities. For example, if a donor were to be interested in helping us with teacher's salaries, we would be most appreciative. If another donor were interested in covering the cost of schoolbooks, this would be welcomed. If one door/funder were to come forward with a grant to support everything, we would be thrilled. However, knowing the reality of the donor world in this day in age, we understand that this is probably highly unlikely. Thus, any amount would be welcomed from $1 to $100,000.

In addition, while we would appreciate multi-year grants, we would also accept one-time donations from interested parties.

• D. ACCOUNTABILITY

For all donations to the Monastery, we will provide whatever financial and / or programmatic reporting requested by the donor. We recognize the importance of each donor feeling that their funds are being used for the purposed activities.

With this in mind, we will ensure that our accountant understands your needs and accommodates them. This is only fair.

E. CLOSING STATEMENT

As we noted above, we strongly feel that having our Monastery located in a country where much of the population lives well below the poverty line, it is our responsibility to provide social services to the people who reside within our community. With this in mind, in the name of humanity, our monastery has done everything we can to implement useful, cost-effective programs that accommodate the many needs of those people who are living in dire conditions. Our reason is simple – based on the timeless principles of Buddhist teachings, we have initiated our programs with a desire to nurture a sense of compassion, goodwill, harmony, cooperation and wisdom in our own welfare as well as the welfare of others.

We hope you or your organization will help us in this cause. Thanks for taking the time to read this material.