Charity (IEN) : 87-2033348
November 12 2021
Dear Sangha member & friend,
I’m reaching out to seek your kind support for the newly established Karuna USA, and ask you to consider making a donation towards our urgent launch Appeal (and if you’ve already donated, thank you so much!!).
You may have been at our online launch last week, where we were deeply inspired and encouraged by the support, urgency and excitement of our speakers. If you weren’t there you may really enjoy watching it here.
Karuna USA needs to raise $100,000 in the next 2-3 months, largely from within the Triratna North America community. (We will be casting our fundraising more widely in 2022 & beyond but we need your foundational support in our first months).
$100k may sound like a lot of money, and of course not everyone can give at the same level.
- Perhaps some of us give $100 or $200 - or commit to a $20/$30 monthly gift
- Some of us could give $500 or $1,000 - or commit to a $75/$150 monthly gift
- Some of us could give $5,000 or $10,000 – perhaps as our significant end-of-year charity gift - or commit to a $500 monthly gift
Who are we?
Karuna USA has been established by Triratna Order Members based in the USA as a sister-entity to the already established and highly successful Karunas in the UK and Germany.
Sharing the same values as our Karuna sisters, we are mobilizing resources in support of marginalized people in South Asia: helping them to live decent lives, free from discrimination and marginalization, and ensuring they have the opportunity to fulfil their potential. The types of work Karuna supports are wide-ranging and cover themes such as children’s education, women’s safety and empowerment, livelihood support and legal rights advocacy. And of course during the Covid 19 crisis we have been enormously focused on delivering practical support and resources to communities that are already enormously disadvantaged.
In 2020 Karuna donors funded work that served an astonishing 350 thousand people in South Asia.
As well as supporting work in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, Karuna USA will also support people & communities within the United States itself. Here also, many communities are held back by poverty and marginalization due to systemic inequality. In 2022 we will be researching and identifying where & how our unique Karuna approach (rooted in our Buddhist values and the teachings of Dr Ambedkhar) can make the most difference and we look forward to sharing the outcome of that thinking with you.
We are deeply inspired by the opportunities that Karuna USA could create. Not just opportunities - of course - to empower individuals and communities to transform their lives in truly profound ways, but also the opportunity to build an ambitious United States-based and Triratna-led nonprofit, create a new Team Based Right Livelihood, and work together as a community, country-wide, on a powerful shared expression of our altruistic values.
In order to do achieve all this we are asking, humbly, for your support at this critical point in our establishment.
What exactly will your donation do?
Your donation will help us to plan for wider fundraising efforts, begin our USA program planning, and resource us to grow. Most importantly, your donation will enable us to start sending funds to our partners in South Asia. It will ensure that Karuna USA moves beyond being an inspiring idea to becoming a living reality and an actual force for good.
Please do consider making a gift and reflect carefully about what donation level might be possible for you, in 2021 in particular.
Please do give whatever you can.
If you want to chat through this further, please let myself or Ananta know and we will happily call.
With much love – and enormous gratitude,
Samayasri & Ananta
YOU CAN DONATE IN VARIOUS WAYS:
Online:
https://www.karuna-usa.org/donate
By postal cheque:
Made out to: Karuna USA, Inc.
Send to: Karuna USA, 427 Clinton Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231
By bank transfer:
If you would like to give by bank transfer, please contact one of us and we will share our account details.
PLEASE NOTE: OUR TAX DEDUCTIBILITY STATUS. All donations will be tax deductible for USA tax payers & donation receipts will be issued. However we do not have the official approval to issue receipts currently: we expect to receive it within 2-3 months. Tax receipts will then be issued retrospectively. If you must have a tax deductible receipt before Dec 31st, we have the facility via another charity to receive donations for Karuna USA and issue tax deductible receipts. Please contact Samayasri or Ananta if that is the case.