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The Buddhist Hour Radio Broadcast Archives 'THE BUDDHIST HOUR' RADIO BROADCAST
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KNOX FM 87.6 Sundays 11:00am to 12:00pm |
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BROADCAST JULY 9, 2000
Today’s program is entitled: Self-funding: Our Eighth Objective.
Fundraising ‘per se’ has never been the prime objective of our existence. Our key objectives are to introduce a philosophy of life based on Buddha Dhamma and to encourage the study, practice and realisation of Buddha Dhamma.
We understand that should fundraising become priority number one, soon we would abandon the strategic focus of our organization, “ that the Buddha Dharma be taught”.
A very high priority is given to the supply chain management of good, censored information that is fit for use as we deliver it to many persons.
More and more our strategic focus is to deliver this good, censored information from different Web Sites on the Internet.
The censorship is necessary to ensure that the information is non-sexist, non-ageist and non-racist and is conducive to the well-being of the many and for the supreme awakening of the few.
Within two years from now, our strategic plan calls for our on-site Local Area Network (LAN) to have about 10 gigabites of censored good information and multimedia presentation. Much of this information will be distributed over about 28 Web Sites.
Our commitment is that we raise sufficient funds to gather, edit, produce, organize and deliver this magnitude of good information within this time frame.
We believe that 10% of the world’s population will be able to access the Internet delivery systems within the next few years. We still intend to distribute our paper based information to interested persons in poorer countries who may not have Internet access. We help persons in many ways. We have provided our older laptop computers to three Buddhist Orphanages in India and Bangladesh.
Over the last decade, our expenditure on the production, printing and postage of paper based good information has increased 10 fold.
At present, our flagship paper publication, our 84 page BUDDHA DHYANA DANA REVIEW is distributed to 40 Countries, 3 times a year. From paper reprints and the Internet, delivery of BDDR, we plan for one million readers per issue within the next decade.
The accounting group PWC has predicted that, by the year 2007, households will have a computing power of more than 100 gigabites, in appliances and combined PCs, DVDs and television sets.
In an article taken from ‘The Australian’, Wednesday 5 July 2000, Mr. Terry Retter, PWC strategic technology services director says: “When we have computers that size for US$ 3000, a Pentium III is going to go for about US$25. Everything is going to have a computer in it when you get that kind of power for that kind of money”.
A new generation of technology-savvy children will soon be at university, demanding more sophisticated means of learning.
“Students are going to want multitasking, high graphic content, interactive and dynamic teams knowledge sharing capabilities." That will change the culture of business significantly over the next seven years. We are at the edge of a fundamental shift to a whole number of devices that is going to move us towards everything being connected. We will be ready to supply more practical fundraising information to help other self-help groups.
Culturally intense organisations, such as ours, have strong attributes of both participative and authoritarian cultures. The conflicting values of these cultures in such organisations permit opportunities for excellence. Most professional trade associations are culturally indifferent. Professional trade organisations, with weak participative and authoritarian values are not our role models.
What are the characteristics of a top communicator?
Age, education and training are essential characteristics of top communicators. Most hold at least Bachelor’s degrees or advanced degrees. Top communicators also report to have had some formal training in public relations.
The irrational exuberance of the Internet culture, because there are no print or paper costs, maybe is misjudged. When print magazines are launched, a hefty marketing budget is needed to make a potential audience aware of its existence. But according to Mark Day (July 2000) marketing is the single biggest expense of web publishing. After spending $US 2,000,000 a month for one year, APB News sacked its employees and closed down on 5 June 2000. One of the few profitable newspaper sites on the Internet is the wall street journal which charges $US 59.00 to access its pages. So far more than 400 000 persons have done so.
The value of the Internet lies in connecting masses of like-minded niche audiences.
We are a self-funding company that relies on donations from Members, fundraising activities and voluntary services to operate the Centre. We encourage Buddha Dhamma practitioners and friends of Buddha Dhamma to offer funds to help us help others with our good information delivery. Bright IT students help us set up our IT systems. This experience looks good on their Curriculum Vitae.
Buddhist Ch'an can teach us how to make the mental shift needed to operate in the information age and become a matrix or mandala planner. Ch'an and Mandala thought are similar and can hold the best of former work skills.
Post Fordism work skills are used by our key Members. We believe in down sized government social services. The private sector will supply some services with cost savings.
Since we are among the second tier of successful self-help charitable organization within the Shire, we expend a small quantity of our resources to convince other local community groups to find tactics that require less State or Shire rate payer's Money and encourage them to move to self-funding designs.
Involvement of local persons in our organization teaches them to manage costs in supply chain management and seek to find the hidden costs of projects. Then they can understand and accept costs presented by local State and Shire Officers, whose task it is to plan, conserve and inform citizens about the direction of their future services, and balance the real cost of goods and services provided in the State and Shire against income.
We do believe that costs in these things could be better understood. We wish to close off heedless debate among local citizens. Then, because cost rationality is utmost, emotional energy is conserved, good will appears in the local community, and citizens lend a helping hand to each other.
Good debates then generate more light than heat.
Ch'an helps you appreciate that other persons have good qualities; that the wise add to local resources in skillful ways; and teaches you how to increase consumption without wasting local human and material resources. Because of this Ch'an power, we teach persons not to vilify the way of reason and we do not refuse to use the so-called immaterial products of the intellect.
Our cost management becomes more refined on our computer, because any person can view cost information stored by calling up the file of the last similar fund raising event. The details of fund raising cost experience gained by many persons can be typed onto the same file so those Members who wish to run a similar event next time have access to reliable check lists in a file.
Cost Files can be reviewed from time to time by others.
Thinking about writing costs down is not too threatening when a person can view file after file of past cost events and a culture which allows persons to give rise over time to superior insights or new data which comes from a re- run of events.
For example, our organization has raised funds by selling flowers to the general public on Mother's day and St. Valentine’s day.
Selling flowers is right livelihood.
By law, we must leave an accounting "snail's trail" of buying and selling transactions of such events for audit purposes. This is vital for GST so we have upgraded our software.
Each such event is allotted its own pro forma files detailing such terms of council permission on stall sites, dollar capital outlays, quantity of other requisites, and timing of collecting moneys from operating staff.
Our running sheets is in the form recommended as best practice by the Gaming Commission of NSW. We are licensed to raise funds in NSW.
Volunteer Members give hours of their time freely and we require details to be written down, details of where and when they are needed and things that are to be done, for example, to clean up the site after the event.
This written down enterprise gives future Members and others a generous picture of what we wish to make understood by our Members and reference for others.
In the near future, we will furnish our Internet sites with such stored memory of what is practiced to fund raise on a regular basis.
Our experience can then be stored by other self help groups.
Then, the notion of our Centre as self funding has a place on the records.
Introduction To The Methodology of Professional Conduct of Leaders
As Peter F. Drucker (1990) said, when talking about managing the non-profit organization: “Leadership is a foul-weather job”.
He noted there are a few major don’ts for leaders. The first don’t is that far too many leaders believe that what they do and why they do it must be obvious to everyone in the organization. It never is.
Far too many persons holding a position of leadership believe that when they announce things, everyone understands, whereas in reality this is seldom true. To overcome this we invest a lot of time and well considered effort on our internal public relations.
Effective leaders need to spend real time making themselves understood.
The second don’t is not to be afraid of the strengths that reside in your organization. Don’t pick your successor alone. We tend to pick successors who remind us of ourselves when we were twenty years younger. This is pure delusion as we end up with weak carbon copies.
The result of this emotional commitment to our own self-image and the habits that accompany it, we place an imperfect No. 2 in the top spot weakening the whole organization.
Drucker considered the most important ‘do’ as being to keep your eye on the task, not on yourself.
To sustain a non-profit organization such as our Centre, attention must be paid to the return on investment made from the time Member’s spend on each fundraising project.
As part of the good financial management of our Centre it is critical that our Members record the details of all fundraising activities so that analysis of what has occurred can be made to identifiy where the return on investment can be improved.
The image and style of our Members has improved over the last two years enabling us to foster wide spread recognition of our Centre as one of the most professional performing World Fellowship of Buddhists (WFB) Regional Centres.
Attendance by selected Members of our Centre to WFB conferences over the past decade have heightened their attention to the wealth that is required to fund such peak International events.
In recent years five of our Members have spent short periods of time as Buddhists Monks in Temples in Melbourne. These overseas and local experiences have transformed and concentrated their minds into recognising the need to put into practice our fourth style - Professionalism.
The seven attributes of a profession are a complex occupation, extensive training, licensing, professional organization, code of ethics and selflessness of Members of the profession.
Extensive and ongoing training is always necessary to stay abreast of the dynamic changes in the world. Ultimately, professional behaviour comes about because an individual feels an obligation to serve others fairly.
The satisfaction of helping others is one of the most important rewards of being professional.
We believe our methodology to be sound in accordance with Dhamma principles. Like all other non-profit and for-profit organisations, the Knowledge Management Task Unit is a purposive system transforming its resources into a service delivery system to satisfy the needs of the customer base.
The new knowledge we use is managed in a supply chain that extends to over 40 countries.
Fundraising and Public Relations must be a priority .
A decade ago, too many of our young Managers ignored the fact that their prime tasks in which they must be involved are fundraising and building superior public relations .
Then we used young managers in their twenties. Today, our managers are more mature and likely to be in their mid thirties or early forties.
Today most of our managers are University trained graduates.
Good internal reports are part of Public Relations. Recently, easier to administer fundraising projects have been designed and addressed by our Centre’s Manager of Knoweldge Management, Julian Bamford, and we hope other Members respond with like-minded projects.
Our LAPAM Manager, Frank Carter, has developed an ongoing fundraising process which he can operate in conjunction with his private business activities. Through his business contacts he will obtain donations of second-hand computer equipment for our Centre and for ‘PCs for Kids’, which is also a charitable organization.
Our Centre can select those items of computer equipment which are suitable for our own purposes and sell those items which we do not require to raise funds.
During the year, more of our Members began skilling themselves in speed reading and speed learning techniques which require a higher level of energy. This is to make Members develop superior writing skills and groom them in modern managerial methodology.
Given the level of energy that is required for knowledge based solutions, persons need to develop their mental capacity by systematically making merit in order to generate viriya (energy). Without viriya (energy) persons will not be able to change their culture quickly.
Today, we operate in a post-fordism culture.
Planning for Viriya (energy). The energised organization is at hand; Members of our Centre provide the energy required for the successful completion of projects at hand. Our S5 Managers no longer control the distribution of rich information our Centre produces, all our Members have access to the same information.
Our internal e-mail system provides Members with the means to communicate vast amounts of complex data in a time effective manner. This high level of information exchange would not be possible by Members if they had not given up their need for verbal exchanges.
Our e-mail system allows Members to conserve viriya (energy), which can then be directed to our Centres important projects that are necessary for implementing the strategic objectives of our Organisation.
The technology we use is leading edge. Old-fashioned work culture of several members has been disputed as being outside our new S5 culture, thus preventing them from making this important change. Modern manager’s at our Centre have various projects to complete. Managers introduce persons to our Centres written conceptual solutions for networking that were prepared for the World Fellowship of Buddhists on the World Buddhist University report. Members must exert their own energy levels when undertaking projects. To work in a harmonious group each individual cannot rely on other persons energy. Members co-evolving in their Post-Fordism thinking about the next refinement of information rich planning is now common.
One of our major fundraising projects is the regular visit of many Vietnamese people from Buddhist Temples throughout Victoria during the Chinese New Year period. Members at our Centre kindly donate their time and energy to making sure these vistiors are made welcome.
Should a philanthropic person, family or organization wish to donate funds and resources to the B.D.C.(U)Ltd, then the Members can immediately present a forward plan and cost estimates in respect of the Centre’s future development, which may inspire and satisfy the would-be benefactor's aims for the wise and fruitful use of their donation.
The Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey)Ltd has been a learning Centre for over 20 years. Members generosity in donating their time and money provide the main source of support for the activities of the B.D.C.(U)Ltd and enables the daily running costs of the Centre to be met.
Part of their efforts are directly focused on fundraising and this approach to fundraising and some of the methods previously tried, are offered below as suggestions for other Buddha Dhamma Groups to broaden their income generating base.
A low energy way of funding a particular project is to provide each member of the Centre with a large jar to keep at home and, into which they can put small change. If a Centre had 20 members who each put $5.00 per week into their jar, at the end of the first year $5,200.00 would be saved plus interest.
The jars are collected every 3 months and the money banked. Whatever the amount collected, a few coins daily can substantially improve the financial situation of a Centre, and provide the means to undertake new projects.
In Melbourne, there are several Companies who provide Organizations such as ours with the opportunity to raise funds. The B.D.C.(U)Ltd started a few years ago to take advantage of this opportunity offered by some of these groups by selling prepackaged nuts and chocolates to friends, neighbours and work mates.
Conducting a fundraising appeal
Before our Members begin a fundraising appeal involving the public, we must notify the Office of Fair Trading and Business Affairs.
The legislation requires us to complete and lodge with the Office of Fair Trading and Business Affairs a Notice of Intention to Conduct a Fundraising Appeal form at least 28 days before our fundraising activity is to be started. A copy of the form and full instructions are available from the Office by calling (03) 9627 6148 or logging on to their Internet site at www.dms.dpc.vic.gov.au.
The Australian Taxation Office should also be contacted regarding tax exemptions or regarding the tax deductibility of donations made to your organisation.
It is thought that Buddhist groups should be an example in accountability to the Community in any operations involving Dana or generosity. We avoid long development cycles for KM internal applications because too much time often nullifies any benefits. For example, the time line for broadcasting radio programs has a unit time no longer than one week to complete and edit the script. Peter Drucker, in the preface to his book, Managing the Non-Profit Organization, says that over 40 years ago, when he began to work with nonprofit institutions, they were seen as marginal to American society, which was then dominated by government and big business organisations. Today, non-profit institutions are central to American society, and are indeed its most distinguishing feature.
Peter Drucker’s observations are valid for Australian society. All nonprofit organizations have something in common: Their product is a changed human being. Nonprofit organizations are human change agents. Over four decades ago, the concept of ‘management’ was alien to the operation of nonprofit organizations, because of its association with the notion of ‘business’ and the need to look for a bottom line.
What 'non-profit' organizations have come to realize is that they need to implement management processes to ensure profitability and future operating success. Management techniques were utilised to keep non-profit organisations operating, so they could concentrate on their mission.
The most important role of leadership in an organization is to identify and define its operational mission. The strategic mission of the Buddhist Discussion Center (Upwey) Ltd. is that the Buddha Dhamma be taught. The task of our managers is to transform this mission statement into action.
The most important responsibility of managers is to foresee and take preventative action against potential crises: this calls for innovation, and continuous organizational development.
Non-profit organizations have the same need for innovation as profit-generating organizations and governments.
We are organizing ourselves for systematic innovation. For example, we are creating a conceptual plan to take advantage of the business opportunities available through use of the Internet.
We prepare reports systematically, which allows us to see opportunities within the overall context in which we operate. Our well-articulated strategies are converted into specific plans which deliver concrete results.
Who are our customers? They are five groups of people - the Sangha, devotees, persons wishing to develop faith and confidence this human life, persons faithful by nature, and those of faithful temperament.
Delivery of a service to a passive recipient is not the goal of a nonprofit organization. The objective is to get the target market not to be users, but doers. The involvement in the service aims to bring about behavioural changes. When the Buddha Dhamma is taught and the students practice in earnest, one of the results is a student’s changed behaviour.
There was a myth some time ago that non-profit organizations did not need to be marketed, but current wisdom suggests that marketing must form an integral part of the service. Non-profit organizations need a strategy for fund development. They raise their money from people who want to participate in the cause but who are not necessarily the beneficiaries.
We hope that the strategies outlined in this script can be of help to fundraising efforts made by other Buddhist and non Buddhist charitable organisations.
The Script Writers of this Radio Program are: John D. Hughes, Vincenzo Cavuoto, Phillip Svensson, Leanne Eames, Pennie White, Lisa Nelson, Evelin Halls, Julian Bamford, David Igracki and Frank Carter.
Disclaimer:
As we, the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd., do not control the actions of our service providers from time to time, make no warranty as to the continuous operation of our website(s). Also, we make no assertion as to the veracity of any of the information included in any of the links with our websites, or an other source accessed through our website(s).
Accordingly, we accept no liability to any user or subsequent third party, either expressed or implied, whether or not caused by error or omission on either our part, or a member, employee or other person associated with the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd. References
Drucker, Peter F Managing the Non-Profit Organisation HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1990.
Seitel, Fraser P. The Practice of Public Relations Prentice Hall, Engelwood Cliffs, New Jersey 1995 Booting up for the brave new world, The Australian, Wednesday 5 July 2000, p.24.
Guide for Fundraising Appeals Act www.dms.dpc.vic.gov.au
For more information, contact the Centre or better still, come and visit us. |
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© Copyright. The Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd. |