As you know, ACI offers wonderful and extensive teachings of timeless wisdom free to everyone, with additional low-cost offerings as a bonus.  This is an expensive proposition!  We need money this year to make our year-end goal, to be able to keep the offering going.

We are looking forward with excitement to our next 30 years, and we are inviting you to help us envision them. But to fulfill our mission and keep offering the dharma teachings for free, and additional in-person programming at a low cost that normally does not cover our expenses—we gladly take a loss and celebrate it!—we have a fundraising goal to reach by the end of year.

Our yearly budget continues to increase as our worldwide audience grows and our dharma offerings expand. Inflation plays a role too. Our staff is small, hard-working, and works for salaries far under market value. Our volunteers and our teachers, by design, work tireless hours for free. We have a huge amount of technical costs that allows us to offer programming free online many times per week in up to now-13 languages. 

So we’re coming to you to ask for your help to keep all these wonderful offerings going.

Our 2024 projected budget is $450,000 USD. This pays for 5 full-time staff members (at about 50% below market rates for salaries of similar responsibilities); 2 part-time staff; our platform fees and technology upgrades by a team of developers; significant Zoom fees; insurance; office rental in Sedona and other normal administrative functions like bookkeeping and professional accounting and legal services. 

Our commitment is to keep this timeless wisdom—and access to it—free of charge. But I am sharing with you today: it’s not at all free to bring these teachings to you, and we need your help to keep doing it.

Please become an ACI STONG-A-THON donor! Here’s what we propose:  Can you commit to donating $30 a month to ACI? Our goal is to get commitments from 1,000 people across the world by December 31!  Can you be one of those 1,000 people? Can you make a commitment to support your teachers, fellow students, and the dharma at that level? The commitment would last from December 2023 to December 2024.

Of course, if you’re not able to afford $30 per month, we know that you already value the teachings and the experience that you get from ACI. So any amount that you can contribute on an ongoing basis will be welcome! 

you get:

• All-inclusive access to all our online programs throughout the year, including all special classes, symposia, and virtual gompas during our programs. No more signing up to register and paying separately. 

• Notification of each new teaching of the 18 ACI Foundation Courses offered through our learning platform, so you know all the details–when and where each class is happening

• Monthly exclusive Q&A for STONG-A-THON donors only with senior ACI teachers via Zoom

• A cool special Zoom background that shows your support for ACI during ACI events

you will get all of the above PLUS:

• Sponsor seating at in-person events for maximum viewing clarity and proximity to stage 

• Premier Sponsor Zoom background

We Are So Grateful

Having this steady income will help us immensely. Our team can get back to work, worry less about funding, and focus on what’s most important: giving people the tools and teachings to make their lives better in every way, and building a bodhisattva network across the world whose focus is to serve the needs of others.

As the executive director of ACI, it is my chief joy in life to help offer so many people the dharma and to organize the means to do so.  Now I am asking for your help so that this can continue to happen, and so that ACI can grow even more.  I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your consideration of my request, and I know that you will do everything you can to help us all make the dharma available for free to everyone in the world that wants it.

Tim Lowenhaupt
Executive Director
timothy@asianclassicsinstitute.org
Telegram: @lowenhaupt