£5,515.51 given and/or pledged for Sudarshanaloka

I've been trying to work out how much my fundraising efforts have raised to date for Sudarshanaloka. I am pleased to discover we have hit the £5,5000 mark which seems significant . Hooray ! Having said that I am aware this is not a huge amount but please bear in mind I have only put in a few weeks work on this since I launched the fundraising back in mid-ish August last year.

£3,681.77 has been given so far, with another £1,833.74 pledged which gives a grand total at 31/1/12 of £5,515.51 including anticipated money coming in through Gift Aid and after admin fees have been subtracted.  

This sum reflects the generosity of some 52 members of the Order and 1 mitra. A big thank you to all of you. The largest single donation has been £1000 and the smallest £5. So as one can see, any size donation is most welcome. Indeed I feel appreciative of all donations. At the same time I think it is clear that I need to find a number of  individuals able and willing to make significantly larger donations of say £5000 upward if I am to achieve the target figure of £60,000. Really I need to think in terms of £66,000 to offset the admin charges and still reach the £60,000 target. [see end of post for info re admin charges should you want to know]

I have not yet approached anyone about giving £5,000 yet and I have a very short list so far of people to approach. So if anyone out there reads this and has some suggestions please get in touch with me. Or, better still, how about asking the person yourself ? If it is someone you know they may well respond to a request from yourself more readily than one from me, especially if I don't know them at all. You can direct them to this blog to find out more information about why I am raising this money and also they can check out Sudarshanaloka through the page links. Ofcourse I will need them to make contact directly with me before they make a donation because if it is a larger donation we need to make sure it is not given via Just Giving...thus avoiding admin charges and maximising on the gift given.

Please do think about whether you can help me in this way.

So far the largest figure I have approached some people about giving is £1000, plus one person for £2000.
I have noticed that most Order members I have approached do not want to think in terms of pledging to raise money to give. So it comes down to what they can afford to give now, or what they feel able to put aside to give later in the year. I think there is only one person I am aware who has raised money as opposed to giving it from their own resources. This particular dharmacharini was I thought very enterprising; she was already raising money for her local centre so she just applied the same method to raise the money for the £50 pledge I asked her to consider doing and which she agreed to do. She raised her pledge over the course of about 48 hours on a womens' National Order w/e in the UK.


Admin charges;  5% plus approx 1.6 % in transfer charges are made by Just Giving on all donations via the Just Giving page I have set up [which handles most of the donations]. A further 5% admin charge is then made by the UK based Triratna Charity which holds/manages all the funds as they are passed on weekly from Just Giving. It is worth pointing out that no admin charge is made by said charity on any donations of £300 upwards providing I arrange for them to be paid directly to them rather than via Just Giving. Also, the Gift Aid claimed back on any donation where the giver pays sufficient tax in the UK for this to happen goes some way to offset the admin charges levied.

Lets keep the money coming in.

bye for now
love Sanghadevi