Mahatma Prabhu's Projects
Donation protected
Dear All,
I want to share with you a vision I have of taking Krishna consciousness to a unique level. I am so excited about this vision that I have decided to dedicate my whole life to make it happen.
Of course, this is a letter to raise funds to make my vision a reality, but even if you are not able or inclined to donate at this point, please read the whole letter. I want you to know what I am doing because what I am doing is important. You will find it interesting, enlivening and enlightening. You might get so inspired you'd want to get involved.
Let's imagine that every member of Iskcon capable of presenting Krishna consciousness to the public were right now supporting themselves by teaching bhakti full time and they had been trained to be among the best facilitators/speakers in the world.
Wouldn't that be amazing? You’d Google TED (a nonprofit organization devoted to ‘ideas worth spreading’) and see numerous listings of titles that seemed related to our teachings. Then you’d check them out and find amazing talks on subjects like happiness, freedom from envy and prejudice, and how the internal world mirrors the external world, all by devotees! You’d work at a major corporation and attend a training by a devotee company on uplifting consciousness. Your yoga teacher would be prompting you to come to a five-day retreat that ended up being run by devotees.
You get the idea.
If Iskcon is going to claim the place that belongs to it in the world, then I believe we need to make this happen. And right now I am investing all my energy in helping make it happen.
Perhaps you're aware that some of the most popular spiritual and self-development writers and speakers in the world today often teach the same basic principles we teach. This shocked me the first time I heard a recording of one famous speaker about 15 years ago. The cassette had no label, so I assumed it was a devotee lecture. For the first five minutes of the recording, before I realized he wasn't a devotee, I was there thinking, "This devotee is amazing! This is one of the best introductory lectures I have ever heard!"
Isn't that interesting?
This speaker is famous and respected. He teaches Eastern spirituality and positive psychology (he has an Indian guru). He tells people to rise early, surrender to God, give up the wish to be a controller, that you are not your body, and even to chant some form of japa. And his audience consists largely of the kinds of people who are not inclined to visit our temples or attend our programs.
This lecture startled me. I began to listen to and read more of what he and other popular writers and speakers of his genre were saying. My emotions were mixed. I saw the opportunity and this excited me. But I also felt frustrated thinking that our devotees should be the ones selling millions of books and packing thousands of people into lecture halls and weekend workshops.
The lecture planted a seed in my heart.
About five years later, the seed received a huge dose of sun, water and fertilizer. I attended a three-day workshop by one well known self-development guru. I watched over 1000 people feed on his words like candy and then sign up for his other seminars (all costing around $2900). I later took facilitation training from him and he revealed that at the workshop I had attended, he had upsold close to one million dollars of seminars!
You might imagine how I felt. Sometimes we can hardly get someone to come to our temple and sit for a lecture (unless we promise they will get a nice feast afterwards) and here people were paying thousands of dollars to attend three to five day workshops!
But the desire that stirred in my heart was not only to reach many more people to bring them Krishna consciousness. It was also an equally important aspiration: to see as many devotees as possible employed in companies around the world teaching Krishna consciousness.
Many things happened since that first workshop I attended, but perhaps what kept my desire burning most was a problem I kept running into as I traveled the Iskcon world teaching japa workshops. Devotees' daily schedules often compromised the time and attention they could give to japa. They would me ask how to make more time for japa, or how to better focus on japa. The problem was that I didn't have a good answer for those whose jobs kept them away from home twelve plus hours a day. Here I was teaching principles to improve japa, supplying the devotees with new tools and strategies for excellent japa, and yet they were going back to a lifestyle that made it difficult - or sometimes impossible - to properly apply them. The devotees attending my workshops just didn't have the time or mental tranquility to chant many quality rounds at home before work, and their challenge was really just to get their rounds done, somehow or other.
The constant reminder of what life is becoming today was pushing me more and more to create a business (and then later franchise the business) in which work schedules would be conducive to good sadhana (and, of course, where only devotees would be working).
In fact, in the early 70's Prabhupada helped devotees start an incense business that did just this. Devotees earned a livelihood without becoming part of the mainstream workforce. Every grhastha in Los Angeles, with the exception of those who worked for the BBT or managed the temple, worked for this company (Spiritual Sky Incense).
So my mission became clear: to create a business to present professionally produced workshops on bhakti (and topics related to bringing people to bhakti) by devotees.
But how to do this? At that time I was living in the US, and monthly expenses were high. If I stopped everything to start a new business, how would I pay my bills? So, in whatever spare time I had, I started laying the foundation of my vision.
Things started moving slowly. Actually they were moving at a snail's pace because I had little spare time. Then Krsna really helped me. He arranged that I would break my hip.
How is that help, I hear you ask?
Since I couldn't walk for two months all I could really do was read, write and think, the three things I needed to do to get my business rolling. This time was spent writing for my website, writing to new people to present them thoughtful ideas, and developing my first workshop.
Then, I set out to make things happen. I began doing workshops for devotees, both because I saw the need in the devotee community for what I had to offer, and because it was a good way to test my workshops, facilitations skills, and business model.
Then I had a problem, and it turned out to be a big one: devotees really liked what I was doing.
Okay, now I am really confusing you. How could success be a problem?
Even though I was busy, Since education in our movement is either free or modestly priced, I couldn't support myself solely teaching devotees. So paradoxically my success in helping the devotees was actually increasing my debts. The more I taught, the more they wanted me. I was in my dharma, and I was loving it, but now I could only make ends meet by living off my credit cards. I needed to get my work out beyond Iskcon in order to support myself and my family, and also, I realized, Krishna wanted me to give what I was giving devotees to others. To do this, I needed to hire one or two people to help me manage it, and I needed this, I needed that....
At this point, I became torn. I now had seven workshops for devotees and I was constantly getting invited to give them. And the response was encouraging. I had chosen to fill a gaping need in Iskcon that was often missing in our regular classes: teaching practical skills both in sadhana and in applying Krishna consciousness in daily living, as well as helping devotees develop better emotional and mental health. But I didn't have any other financial support that would enable me to focus my service only in Iskcon (although often I wished there was some brahminical support foundation that helped teachers in the movement).
So about two years ago, I started extracting myself as much as I could from working primarily with devotees in order to start focusing more time on my original plan of developing a successful spiritual self-development company. In these two years, my team and I have had the opportunity to do successful programs around the world both for general audiences and in corporations the likes of Google, Intel, Cisco and Volvo.
And it has started to work. Here are appreciations from participants in my workshops:
"I learned so much more in your workshops than I did from all the other professional workshops I have taken."
"Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You have really changed me. You have solved my deeply rooted problems. I needed this so much."
"I heard your talk. It was as good as the best motivational speakers I have heard. What you have is so valuable. People need what you are giving."
This feedback shows that we are on the right track and that we can make this work. But now we are working with a few part-time volunteers and you can't develop a business much with only part-time voluntary workers. We need an infrastructure, both to make our company successful and to handle the success we create. We also need people (ideally devotees) with professional marketing and business skills. With this we can establish a solid business in a few years. However, with a volunteer part-time staff it could easily take ten or more years to even come close to this point.
I must say, we are trying to do it on our own. Devotees are sacrificing a lot to put in as much time as they can. But it is not enough. So we finally decided to do a fundraising campaign to really get us off the ground. This will skyrocket our company enabling us to afford a highly trained full-time staff. And this will enable us to soon become solvent.
Prabhupada supports the concept: “If anybody calls for meeting and lecturing, we must charge. And if they want to hear free, they may come to our temple. Don’t become cheap. My Guru Maharaja used to say: ‘If somebody becomes cheap, then nobody hears him."
Montreal, October 26, 1968.
Imagine that our courses are so effectively designed and delivered that most people who take them transform their lives in a way that they are inspired to take up some daily practices of Krishna consciousness and/or pursue further education with us. We can do this. And amazing as this is, it gets even better.
Imagine that a certain percentage of people who like our programs are so inspired that they want to seriously share what they learned with others, and we are able to professionally train them to deliver the this course in a way that will transform others in the same way they were transformed. As the number of trainers worldwide increases, the number of people who take our courses gradually will reach hundreds of thousands - and then millions.
Thinking about this potential sometimes drives me crazy because we can do it. All we need is the right infrastructure, an infrastructure I desperately need to create. But what drives me most crazy is this thought: what if I are unable to pull this off. It is true a few devotees on their own are trying to do an aspect of this, but I am talking about a wave of international success.
If you help me we'll make this happen.
One advantage of our presentations is that they are designed within the context of spiritual self-development, not religion, and this is a huge and receptive market looking for spirituality, ready to pay money in the search of solutions to their problems, but we are missing out on it at the moment (about 20% of Americans define themselves as spiritual but not religious, and the majority of religious sects in the US have less than 20% of the demographic as adherents). . If we expertly and sincerely meet them where they are at, motivating the “spiritual but not religious” with programs that inspire them for transformation, they will more readily accept to pursue systematic education with us and be inspired to follow Krishna consciousness.
Today people have many more choices in the field of Eastern, alternative and self-development spirituality than ever before. Organizations whose teachings are similar to ours but who have adapted their marketing and presentations well to this clientele have carved out a strong place for themselves in this market.
We need to be well-positioned in this market and we can only do this with a strong financial foundation that will uphold a successful and professional company.
Now is the perfect time to invest money and energy into developing high impact educational programs for the public. What we are really asking is for you to support brahminical work. This is our tradition, and I believe we need more brahminical support today in Iskcon, an organization whose main function is education.
Thank you for reading this letter and considering helping this important project that can grow into something that can change the lives of thousands of people who otherwise would never come in contact with Iskcon. Let us bring this to fruition together. If what I am saying strikes a chord in you, or if my writings, lectures or seminars have helped you in any way, please read on to see our (ideal) budget for 2016 below and how you can help.
And if you would like to write me personally with thoughts or ideas about how you can also help with your ideas or skills, or if you have questions about how money is being used, I would love to talk. You can write me at [email redacted], on FB at Mahatma Das and on Skype at Mahatma das.
Your servant,
Mahatma das
2016 Budget
Our baseline budget for this year, itemized below and giving you a detailed idea of our specific financial needs, is $125,575 (about $10,500 a month). This will allow us to build the infrastructure which will enable us to become solvent in a few years.
App for the Mantra Project - $3500
This will enable people to join our mantra project on their phones, download classes, and share the app with others (and to even chant japa on their phones).
App for Mahatma Wisdom - $800 for iphone (it has been done for android)
Devotees will receive a quote a day from my writings or workshops on their phones and also be informed of where my seminars are being offered.
2 Apps for Soul Tools - $3000
The same as above, but the quotes are written for people who are not practicing devotees.
Website upgrade for Soul Tools and Soul Tools Corporate - $2000
We have developed two barebones websites but we neither have the time or expertise to bring them to a real professional level.
Website upgrade for Mantra Project - $3000
This site is intended to be a member site with a variety of articles, blogs and online classes, and will also require hiring devotees to write copy and work on developing online classes.
Rent for Soul Tools office - $12000 per year
We have set up our main headquarters in Mexico and require office space now as well as secondary facilities in Mayapur.
Office furniture - $1750
Support for Soul Tools staff of 5 devotees for up to one year - $8000 per month ($72,000 per year).
We require devotees for marketing, sales, web maintenance, audio/visual, graphics, logistics, coaching and facilitation.
Printing of Mahatma Wisdom (ready for print) - $2500 for 3000 copies (plus set up costs for ISBN number, etc.)
This is a book of quotes taken from my writings and workshops especially written for those unfamiliar with bhakti. If you want to order advanced copies, let me know - it will make a nice present for those new to bhakti.
Printing of Mahatma Wisdom Spanish (ready for print spring '16) - $2500 for 3000 copies (plus costs for ISBN number, etc.)
Translation is 80% finished. If you want to order advanced copies, please contact me.
Printing of Living the Wisdom of Bhakti (ready for print end of '16) - $3300 for 3000 copies (plus set up costs for ISBN number, etc.)
This book consists of the newsletters I have written over the past 8 years. They have been re-written and edited, and grouped into categories. This is the first Krishna conscious self-help book in Iskcon. If you want to order advanced copies for your temple or project, please contact me).
Reprinting of Forever CD - $1000 for 2000 copies
This is my latest music CD.
Mail Chimp service for sending newsletters - $600 per year
This is our service provider for our newsletters.
Formation of Soul Tools non-profits in India, US and Mexico - $3200
We need to form non-profits in the main countries where Soul Tools in based. There will be more countries in the future.
Production of pen drives - $1000
Production cost is $10 per drive. One drive contains all my lectures and workshops (about 500 hours) and another contains all my music (about 13 hours). I would like to start with at least 50 of my lectures and 50 of the musical tracks.
Marketing - $7000
This requires hiring professionals for branding, logo design, and developing online marketing campaign. It also requires training course for one of our devotees.
Travel - $7000
My yearly travel expenses (last year I travelled to 12 countries).
I sincerely thank you for considering this project.
Here are some pictures that you could click and see about what we have been doing with Soul Tools-
https://youtu.be/DlwkEG06d10http://mahatmadas.com/wp-admin/upload.php?item=4099
http://mahatmadas.com/wp-admin/upload.php?item=4097
http://mahatmadas.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Presenting-Soul-Tools-to-business-owners.jp
http://mahatmadas.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Picture-2.jpg
http://mahatmadas.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Picture-15.jpg
http://mahatmadas.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Picture-14.jpg
I want to share with you a vision I have of taking Krishna consciousness to a unique level. I am so excited about this vision that I have decided to dedicate my whole life to make it happen.
Of course, this is a letter to raise funds to make my vision a reality, but even if you are not able or inclined to donate at this point, please read the whole letter. I want you to know what I am doing because what I am doing is important. You will find it interesting, enlivening and enlightening. You might get so inspired you'd want to get involved.
Let's imagine that every member of Iskcon capable of presenting Krishna consciousness to the public were right now supporting themselves by teaching bhakti full time and they had been trained to be among the best facilitators/speakers in the world.
Wouldn't that be amazing? You’d Google TED (a nonprofit organization devoted to ‘ideas worth spreading’) and see numerous listings of titles that seemed related to our teachings. Then you’d check them out and find amazing talks on subjects like happiness, freedom from envy and prejudice, and how the internal world mirrors the external world, all by devotees! You’d work at a major corporation and attend a training by a devotee company on uplifting consciousness. Your yoga teacher would be prompting you to come to a five-day retreat that ended up being run by devotees.
You get the idea.
If Iskcon is going to claim the place that belongs to it in the world, then I believe we need to make this happen. And right now I am investing all my energy in helping make it happen.
Perhaps you're aware that some of the most popular spiritual and self-development writers and speakers in the world today often teach the same basic principles we teach. This shocked me the first time I heard a recording of one famous speaker about 15 years ago. The cassette had no label, so I assumed it was a devotee lecture. For the first five minutes of the recording, before I realized he wasn't a devotee, I was there thinking, "This devotee is amazing! This is one of the best introductory lectures I have ever heard!"
Isn't that interesting?
This speaker is famous and respected. He teaches Eastern spirituality and positive psychology (he has an Indian guru). He tells people to rise early, surrender to God, give up the wish to be a controller, that you are not your body, and even to chant some form of japa. And his audience consists largely of the kinds of people who are not inclined to visit our temples or attend our programs.
This lecture startled me. I began to listen to and read more of what he and other popular writers and speakers of his genre were saying. My emotions were mixed. I saw the opportunity and this excited me. But I also felt frustrated thinking that our devotees should be the ones selling millions of books and packing thousands of people into lecture halls and weekend workshops.
The lecture planted a seed in my heart.
About five years later, the seed received a huge dose of sun, water and fertilizer. I attended a three-day workshop by one well known self-development guru. I watched over 1000 people feed on his words like candy and then sign up for his other seminars (all costing around $2900). I later took facilitation training from him and he revealed that at the workshop I had attended, he had upsold close to one million dollars of seminars!
You might imagine how I felt. Sometimes we can hardly get someone to come to our temple and sit for a lecture (unless we promise they will get a nice feast afterwards) and here people were paying thousands of dollars to attend three to five day workshops!
But the desire that stirred in my heart was not only to reach many more people to bring them Krishna consciousness. It was also an equally important aspiration: to see as many devotees as possible employed in companies around the world teaching Krishna consciousness.
Many things happened since that first workshop I attended, but perhaps what kept my desire burning most was a problem I kept running into as I traveled the Iskcon world teaching japa workshops. Devotees' daily schedules often compromised the time and attention they could give to japa. They would me ask how to make more time for japa, or how to better focus on japa. The problem was that I didn't have a good answer for those whose jobs kept them away from home twelve plus hours a day. Here I was teaching principles to improve japa, supplying the devotees with new tools and strategies for excellent japa, and yet they were going back to a lifestyle that made it difficult - or sometimes impossible - to properly apply them. The devotees attending my workshops just didn't have the time or mental tranquility to chant many quality rounds at home before work, and their challenge was really just to get their rounds done, somehow or other.
The constant reminder of what life is becoming today was pushing me more and more to create a business (and then later franchise the business) in which work schedules would be conducive to good sadhana (and, of course, where only devotees would be working).
In fact, in the early 70's Prabhupada helped devotees start an incense business that did just this. Devotees earned a livelihood without becoming part of the mainstream workforce. Every grhastha in Los Angeles, with the exception of those who worked for the BBT or managed the temple, worked for this company (Spiritual Sky Incense).
So my mission became clear: to create a business to present professionally produced workshops on bhakti (and topics related to bringing people to bhakti) by devotees.
But how to do this? At that time I was living in the US, and monthly expenses were high. If I stopped everything to start a new business, how would I pay my bills? So, in whatever spare time I had, I started laying the foundation of my vision.
Things started moving slowly. Actually they were moving at a snail's pace because I had little spare time. Then Krsna really helped me. He arranged that I would break my hip.
How is that help, I hear you ask?
Since I couldn't walk for two months all I could really do was read, write and think, the three things I needed to do to get my business rolling. This time was spent writing for my website, writing to new people to present them thoughtful ideas, and developing my first workshop.
Then, I set out to make things happen. I began doing workshops for devotees, both because I saw the need in the devotee community for what I had to offer, and because it was a good way to test my workshops, facilitations skills, and business model.
Then I had a problem, and it turned out to be a big one: devotees really liked what I was doing.
Okay, now I am really confusing you. How could success be a problem?
Even though I was busy, Since education in our movement is either free or modestly priced, I couldn't support myself solely teaching devotees. So paradoxically my success in helping the devotees was actually increasing my debts. The more I taught, the more they wanted me. I was in my dharma, and I was loving it, but now I could only make ends meet by living off my credit cards. I needed to get my work out beyond Iskcon in order to support myself and my family, and also, I realized, Krishna wanted me to give what I was giving devotees to others. To do this, I needed to hire one or two people to help me manage it, and I needed this, I needed that....
At this point, I became torn. I now had seven workshops for devotees and I was constantly getting invited to give them. And the response was encouraging. I had chosen to fill a gaping need in Iskcon that was often missing in our regular classes: teaching practical skills both in sadhana and in applying Krishna consciousness in daily living, as well as helping devotees develop better emotional and mental health. But I didn't have any other financial support that would enable me to focus my service only in Iskcon (although often I wished there was some brahminical support foundation that helped teachers in the movement).
So about two years ago, I started extracting myself as much as I could from working primarily with devotees in order to start focusing more time on my original plan of developing a successful spiritual self-development company. In these two years, my team and I have had the opportunity to do successful programs around the world both for general audiences and in corporations the likes of Google, Intel, Cisco and Volvo.
And it has started to work. Here are appreciations from participants in my workshops:
"I learned so much more in your workshops than I did from all the other professional workshops I have taken."
"Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You have really changed me. You have solved my deeply rooted problems. I needed this so much."
"I heard your talk. It was as good as the best motivational speakers I have heard. What you have is so valuable. People need what you are giving."
This feedback shows that we are on the right track and that we can make this work. But now we are working with a few part-time volunteers and you can't develop a business much with only part-time voluntary workers. We need an infrastructure, both to make our company successful and to handle the success we create. We also need people (ideally devotees) with professional marketing and business skills. With this we can establish a solid business in a few years. However, with a volunteer part-time staff it could easily take ten or more years to even come close to this point.
I must say, we are trying to do it on our own. Devotees are sacrificing a lot to put in as much time as they can. But it is not enough. So we finally decided to do a fundraising campaign to really get us off the ground. This will skyrocket our company enabling us to afford a highly trained full-time staff. And this will enable us to soon become solvent.
Prabhupada supports the concept: “If anybody calls for meeting and lecturing, we must charge. And if they want to hear free, they may come to our temple. Don’t become cheap. My Guru Maharaja used to say: ‘If somebody becomes cheap, then nobody hears him."
Montreal, October 26, 1968.
Imagine that our courses are so effectively designed and delivered that most people who take them transform their lives in a way that they are inspired to take up some daily practices of Krishna consciousness and/or pursue further education with us. We can do this. And amazing as this is, it gets even better.
Imagine that a certain percentage of people who like our programs are so inspired that they want to seriously share what they learned with others, and we are able to professionally train them to deliver the this course in a way that will transform others in the same way they were transformed. As the number of trainers worldwide increases, the number of people who take our courses gradually will reach hundreds of thousands - and then millions.
Thinking about this potential sometimes drives me crazy because we can do it. All we need is the right infrastructure, an infrastructure I desperately need to create. But what drives me most crazy is this thought: what if I are unable to pull this off. It is true a few devotees on their own are trying to do an aspect of this, but I am talking about a wave of international success.
If you help me we'll make this happen.
One advantage of our presentations is that they are designed within the context of spiritual self-development, not religion, and this is a huge and receptive market looking for spirituality, ready to pay money in the search of solutions to their problems, but we are missing out on it at the moment (about 20% of Americans define themselves as spiritual but not religious, and the majority of religious sects in the US have less than 20% of the demographic as adherents). . If we expertly and sincerely meet them where they are at, motivating the “spiritual but not religious” with programs that inspire them for transformation, they will more readily accept to pursue systematic education with us and be inspired to follow Krishna consciousness.
Today people have many more choices in the field of Eastern, alternative and self-development spirituality than ever before. Organizations whose teachings are similar to ours but who have adapted their marketing and presentations well to this clientele have carved out a strong place for themselves in this market.
We need to be well-positioned in this market and we can only do this with a strong financial foundation that will uphold a successful and professional company.
Now is the perfect time to invest money and energy into developing high impact educational programs for the public. What we are really asking is for you to support brahminical work. This is our tradition, and I believe we need more brahminical support today in Iskcon, an organization whose main function is education.
Thank you for reading this letter and considering helping this important project that can grow into something that can change the lives of thousands of people who otherwise would never come in contact with Iskcon. Let us bring this to fruition together. If what I am saying strikes a chord in you, or if my writings, lectures or seminars have helped you in any way, please read on to see our (ideal) budget for 2016 below and how you can help.
And if you would like to write me personally with thoughts or ideas about how you can also help with your ideas or skills, or if you have questions about how money is being used, I would love to talk. You can write me at [email redacted], on FB at Mahatma Das and on Skype at Mahatma das.
Your servant,
Mahatma das
2016 Budget
Our baseline budget for this year, itemized below and giving you a detailed idea of our specific financial needs, is $125,575 (about $10,500 a month). This will allow us to build the infrastructure which will enable us to become solvent in a few years.
App for the Mantra Project - $3500
This will enable people to join our mantra project on their phones, download classes, and share the app with others (and to even chant japa on their phones).
App for Mahatma Wisdom - $800 for iphone (it has been done for android)
Devotees will receive a quote a day from my writings or workshops on their phones and also be informed of where my seminars are being offered.
2 Apps for Soul Tools - $3000
The same as above, but the quotes are written for people who are not practicing devotees.
Website upgrade for Soul Tools and Soul Tools Corporate - $2000
We have developed two barebones websites but we neither have the time or expertise to bring them to a real professional level.
Website upgrade for Mantra Project - $3000
This site is intended to be a member site with a variety of articles, blogs and online classes, and will also require hiring devotees to write copy and work on developing online classes.
Rent for Soul Tools office - $12000 per year
We have set up our main headquarters in Mexico and require office space now as well as secondary facilities in Mayapur.
Office furniture - $1750
Support for Soul Tools staff of 5 devotees for up to one year - $8000 per month ($72,000 per year).
We require devotees for marketing, sales, web maintenance, audio/visual, graphics, logistics, coaching and facilitation.
Printing of Mahatma Wisdom (ready for print) - $2500 for 3000 copies (plus set up costs for ISBN number, etc.)
This is a book of quotes taken from my writings and workshops especially written for those unfamiliar with bhakti. If you want to order advanced copies, let me know - it will make a nice present for those new to bhakti.
Printing of Mahatma Wisdom Spanish (ready for print spring '16) - $2500 for 3000 copies (plus costs for ISBN number, etc.)
Translation is 80% finished. If you want to order advanced copies, please contact me.
Printing of Living the Wisdom of Bhakti (ready for print end of '16) - $3300 for 3000 copies (plus set up costs for ISBN number, etc.)
This book consists of the newsletters I have written over the past 8 years. They have been re-written and edited, and grouped into categories. This is the first Krishna conscious self-help book in Iskcon. If you want to order advanced copies for your temple or project, please contact me).
Reprinting of Forever CD - $1000 for 2000 copies
This is my latest music CD.
Mail Chimp service for sending newsletters - $600 per year
This is our service provider for our newsletters.
Formation of Soul Tools non-profits in India, US and Mexico - $3200
We need to form non-profits in the main countries where Soul Tools in based. There will be more countries in the future.
Production of pen drives - $1000
Production cost is $10 per drive. One drive contains all my lectures and workshops (about 500 hours) and another contains all my music (about 13 hours). I would like to start with at least 50 of my lectures and 50 of the musical tracks.
Marketing - $7000
This requires hiring professionals for branding, logo design, and developing online marketing campaign. It also requires training course for one of our devotees.
Travel - $7000
My yearly travel expenses (last year I travelled to 12 countries).
I sincerely thank you for considering this project.
Here are some pictures that you could click and see about what we have been doing with Soul Tools-
https://youtu.be/DlwkEG06d10http://mahatmadas.com/wp-admin/upload.php?item=4099
http://mahatmadas.com/wp-admin/upload.php?item=4097
http://mahatmadas.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Presenting-Soul-Tools-to-business-owners.jp
http://mahatmadas.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Picture-2.jpg
http://mahatmadas.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Picture-15.jpg
http://mahatmadas.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Picture-14.jpg
Organiser
Mahatma Das
Organiser
Alachua, FL