Unified Giving in Shambhala

This fall the Halifax Shambhala Centre will begin to roll out Unified Giving, a new funding model to support the core services of Shambhala’s global mandala. This is a based on the model used by many large non-profits with core services and local chapters. Since we are part of a global mandala supported by central services, this makes a lot of sense and will simplify the fundraising in our mandala. The services provided by Shambhala are the backbone of our international community. Shambhala supports Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche and most of what we encounter at our local centre stems from or is provided by the central services, including, our curriculum, database and web platforms, teacher support, guidelines for festivities, designs for our environment, pins, orders for our kasung, and the list goes on.

In order to support the services provided by Shambhala, local centres give a portion of their revenue to the centre of the mandala. This fall centres are being asked to increase their transfers to support the operating costs of Shambhala, so they will eventually no longer need to fundraise for anything except capital projects, and not create a perception of “competing” with local centres’ fundraising goals. This will allow people to focus on their local connection, which will then support the backbone of Shambhala. Beginning in September, Halifax will be increasing our funding of Shambhala from ~3% to ~9% of our gross revenue and will re-evaluate in January. In the long term we have been asked to increase our funding to 25% of revenue, with the understanding that members who are currently giving to Shambhala on a monthly basis, will switch those gifts to their local centres. For more information on this, please refer to the Funding Shambhala website: http://funding.shambhalatimes.org/unified-giving/

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