The Lotus Institute, a 25 year old Buddhist, educational non-profit, maintained limited visibility despite the co-founders’ status as senior teachers of renowned Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, notability as early mentors to many Black, Indigenous and other Buddhists of color, and dedication to supporting activists around the world. Aside from a wish to reach more people, gain recognition and achieve sustainability, the founders wanted better internal systems, more operational support and a plan for creating a new generation of leadership to carry the org into the future. Previously reliant almost entirely on volunteers and a nearly non-working board, The Lotus Institute needed a reboot. They wanted to grow, flourish, connect with more change makers and as co-founder Peggy Rowe shared, “move into this century.”

Strategy and Branding

Through attending events and facilitating several think tank/visioning sessions with the non-profit’s founders and key supporters, I helped refine the mission/vision with a clear program structure and a new, visual identity. I developed a new website, blog and monthly newsletter, along with collateral for in-person events. I also created YouTube, Soundcloud and social media pages to amplify messaging and distribute regular content.

As a way to reach more people and gain recognition, I assisted the co-founder to write a book (echoing the org’s ethos) by planning a series of national talks that were transcribed and edited. Once publishing was secured, I worked with the publishers and supporters on a book launch campaign to increase visibility for the org and its founders while tying the book with the institute’s curriculum.

The board and myself crafted an innovative program model and accompanying strategic plan to increase donor and program revenue while removing financial barriers to program participation. I helped develop, and served as the project manager for a mix of synchronous and asynchronous offerings, including an online course platform.

As our work together unfolded it became clear we had two distinct program audiences:

• Older, Heteronormative, cis-gendered, mostly white, left-leaning Buddhists of means who were beginning to grapple with internalized oppression

• People of minoritized identities, activists, and organizers, primarily under age 55, who lived and breathed these struggles.

The new board (comprised of many intersecting identities including BIPOC, trans, queer, disabled, and younger practitioners under age 50) and I worked together to ensure our policies, procedures and programming centered minoritized identities while committing to dismantling oppressive behaviors and addressing individual and organizational mis-steps. We also developed an inverted 80/20 program strategy where 80 percent of our program revenue came from 20 percent of our time spent training older, white Buddhists and 80 percent of our time was spent prioritizing support and programming for people of minoritized identities.

Systems and Operations

I helped develop a new team of working board members to test and refine systems for program delivery, community engagement and donor development. I operationalized administrative processes and created workflows for internal communications, programming, event payment and registration, student support, and bookkeeping. A detailed operations folder was created to assist with onboarding new staff and outsourcing to contractors. To support our growing donor base I streamlined the ability for individuals and foundations to give donations and created a Patreon platform for monthly/yearly donors.

Technology tools utilized: Google Workspace, Quickbooks Online, Microsoft Office/Apple equivalent, Zoom, Thinkific, Crowdcast, Paypal, Stripe, Patreon and Otter

Event Management

Historically the organization taught only when and where it was invited. With a new, refined identity, the need became clear for also hosting its own events. I helped develop guidelines, policies and fee structures for contracting the org’s services as well as new frameworks for hosting small and large scale events in-person and online.

Pre-Covid I traveled with the org’s founders, doing a lot of behind the scenes work with event planning, registration, booking, scheduling/travel coordination, management and video/audio recording. I also used this as an opportunity to build community and develop donor/student relationships.

For online events I provided services like tech hosting (eventually creating systems for hiring this out), prepping guest teachers, setting up registration, event coordination, hosting and post-event follow up.

• 13.4% increase in donation revenue and 824% increase in programming/sales revenue in 2020

• Jump in monthly donors from 2 to 200

• Consistent increase in event attendance, including an online retreat in 2020 with over 200 participants, generating over 12x the take-away revenue of any event in the history of the org

• A new online, asynchronous class platform that generated 17% of revenue in 2020

• 100-fold increase in subscribers across social media platforms

• 8-fold increase in newsletter enrollment

• 43% average open-rate on email campaigns

• When Covid struck we were surprised but poised to pivot; we transitioned fully online with a minimal learning curve

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