NEWS
Have you seen the latest Newsletter from the Sacramento Dharma Center? If not, click here to access the newsletter and optionally sign up to receive future issues. The February newsletter includes the topics:
SIM is grateful for all our donors and we’ve already emailed tax letters to those who’ve donated $250 or more in 2023. If you have not received the tax letter (dated Jan 21 or Jan 22, 2024) and you think you should have, please check your email Inbox, as well as your Spam or Junk folders. If you still don’t find it, please contact GregG@sactoinsight.org.
Dear Friends,
Deep gratitude to all those who donated to our yearend fundraising effort. We raised $24,020! This is a fantastic start to covering our budget shortfall. But we still anticipate having a budget/revenue shortfall in 2024 due in large part to our new – and absolutely essential – Operations Manager position which adds $22,000 to our annual expenses.
As we start this new year, we are beginning a campaign for the month of January to get 10 new monthly donors and 10 current donors to increase their monthly contributions. Can you be one? Can you encourage someone you know to be one?
Recurring donations provide reliability and consistency to the organization. This allows us to plan responsibly and make future commitments.
Our current monthly contributions range from $10 to $200 per month. However, this is not enough to cover our anticipated 2024 expenditures.
What does your donation support?
If you are not currently donating monthly, please consider signing up. If you are currently donating monthly, please consider increasing your donation.
It’s easy to sign up online by going to the Donation page. Put in the amount and choose “Make this donation every month”.
If you want to increase your online donation, email website@sactoinsight.org with the changes you want to make and Sabitre will update your contribution.
And just to have some fun and give a little incentive for folks to sign up, if you become a monthly donor, or change your donation rate, during the month of January, we will be holding a drawing for two lucky winners to go out for a meal with Senior Teacher Rich Howard and another with SIM Founding Teacher Dennis Warren.
With gratitude,
Amy Kovak, on behalf of the SIM Board of Directors and Faculty
With the recent rise in the community level of COVID infection, the SIM Board of Directors highly recommends that persons attending in person events at the Sacramento Dharama Center wear effective masks, such as N95, KN95, and KF94, especially those who are at higher risk of serious complications after contracting COVID.
A limited number of masks will be available at the entrance to the Dharma Hall for this purpose.
Additionally, for your wellbeing and that of others, all attendees are encouraged to be fully vaccinated with the most recent recommended vaccines.
Thank you,
Jon Siiteri, on behalf of the Board of Directors
“The householder who is a faithful seeker and in whom dwells truth, Dharma, steadiness, and generosity, does not sorrow when he or she passes away”.
~Samyutta Nikaya I.215
Dear Friends,
Thank you to those who already have donated to the year-end appeal. We deeply appreciate your generosity! May you rejoice in sustaining the Dhamma in Sacramento. If you have not yet donated, there still is time. Please consider SIM when making your year-end charitable donations – your gift matters. Wishing you peace and tranquility during this holiday season.
With deep gratitude, SIM Board of Directors & Faculty
The Sacramento Dharma Center stepped up to support the Mortgage Pay-down Campaign and with a 1-to-1 matching fund that’s still active, there’s time to help reach the initial Mortgage Pay-down goal. For details, visit Mortgage Pay-down Campaign Update.
Valley Streams Zen is hosting a “Quietly Entering the New Year” event and inviting everyone; a special invitation to everyone and anyone who practices at the Sacramento Dharma Center with Sacramento Insight Meditation or the Sacramento Buddhist Meditation Group. Starts at 7 pm, Sunday, Dec 31.
For details, visit https://valleystreamszen.org/event/welcoming-the-new-year-in-person/
“The warmth of the community, the commitment to practicing the Buddha’s teachings, and the generosity of SIM is felt each time I engage with the sangha as a teacher. I feel incredibly fortunate to be a part of all the wholesome offerings SIM continues to put forward into the world.”
~ Vance Pryor, SIM Legacy Project Teacher
Dear Friends,
For over 20 years, SIM has provided a safe and welcoming environment in which to explore the profound teachings of the historical Buddha in the Theravada/Insight Meditation tradition and to cultivate spiritual friendship and community. It has been a rich and precious experience as these teachings can change the way we understand living, relationships, and dying.
SIM has consistently provided a core set of offerings including weekly sit and Dharma talks, monthly daylong retreats, an annual residential retreat, the Beginning Meditation Course, and other courses designed to deepen our practice.
To continue to offer learning and practice opportunities and to ensure SIM’s future and long-term presence in Sacramento, we are launching two vital initiatives:
Funding these initiatives will require an additional $55,000 to our annual budget each year going forward ($33,000 for the LTP; and $22,000 for the OM). And we need your help!
SIM is wholly sustained by the generosity of the community through financial contributions and volunteering. Thank you! To support these new initiatives now, you can help in the following important ways:
Thank you for your contribution and support! We appreciate this deeply and look forward to strengthening our sangha and practicing together in the coming year.
With gratitude,
Amy Kovak, on behalf of the SIM Board of Directors & Faculty
Dear sangha members,
As a member of the Sacramento Insight Meditation community and past member of the SIM Board of Directors I’m thinking about the many things that need to be done to keep our sangha healthy and thriving and about the stresses that these multiple obligations place on our Board. I am hoping to develop a support team of sangha members who can help the Board and contribute to our community in a variety of ways. I will be reaching out to initiate conversations with some and you, and would love to hear from anyone, so that I can learn how you are feeling about your connection SIM and whether you would be willing to take a phone call from a Board member, now or in the future, to discuss helping with a particular project. You would be under no obligation to say “yes”, just to consider helping if asked. Our conversation will also include discussing your interests and your skills to see what type of contribution you would find most appropriate and enjoyable. I’ll be looking forward to these conversations and to strengthening our bonds of sangha. Feel free to drop me a note at cathy@sactoinsight.org. I look forward to hearing from you!
Cathy Vigran