As most of you know, I’ve been working on my new translations of the Pali nikayas for the past couple of years. I’ve been staying on the little island of Qimei off the coast of Taiwan.
My stay there has been made possible by the incredible support of my long-term kappiya Dustin. The little house I stay in is the old family home of Dustin’s wife, Keiko. The financial support for my stay has been provided by Dustin and his family, their Dhamma friends in Penang, and some generous donors in various countries. They have gathered funds to cover the costs of my stay, such as food, utility bills, travel (so I can renew my visa), and so on.
Now Dustin’s looking for some extra support to cover the bills. If anyone’s interested to help out with this, please contact Dustin directly on balaraja.dc@gmail.com. (Balaraja is Dustin’s dhamma name. Yes, it means “king of fools”, and yes, I gave it to him!). If you have any questions, just let me know.
Just so it’s clear, this funding is separate from the general donations for SuttaCentral, which go directly to support development of SC. However, if any funds are left over when I’ve finished my project, Dustin will forward them to SuttaCentral.
Dear Bhante,
Thank you very much for providing this information without which no one could have known how to help even if they wanted to. I will certainly help in my own small way.
Fees are very high in banks. Could cost from $20.00 to $35.00 for each transfer.
I have never used Western Union but they advertise fee free fund transfer.
Perhaps local post office.
It is a good idea if funds are collected in a local level and transfer the bulk at once.
For this we need a world wide net work and not practical.
Another problem is the value lost due to currency conversion.
I am suggesting this based on the long term financing the project.
Printing etc.
It’s a percentage of the transaction. But anyway I checked with Bhante’s steward and it seems they are not likely to set up PayPal to receive funds. The only choice is to go for something like Western Union or MoneyGram it seems.
This is a little bit of an inconvenience because if you want to commit with small but recurring sums lots will be lost in hidden or explicit transaction costs.
They do not have a paypal account at present and I was told that opening a paypal account with apparently the only bank they can open an account with is very troublesome. I will provide an update about bank charges tomorrow.
In the meantime, we can see if Sutta Central can accept individual donations on behalf of Bhante’s project and transfer the funds to him once a month. That way any one will be able to donate on a monthly basis.
Sorry this is more difficult than we thought, I don’t really understand international money movement!
Just so you know, we keep the funds at SuttaCentral separate from the funds for supporting me personally. This is because, as a registered charity, it doesn’t look good for SC to be paying the bills for me, the founder of the charity.
If you want to make a small and/or regular donation, the best thing to minimize bank charges will be to donate to SuttaCentral using Stripe via our donations page.
As for the donations to Dustin for supporting my stay, this is a one-off, as normally he has done fine with help from his friends and family, as well as a few who have been in touch with him. But due to a few factors, including unfavorable exchange rates, this was looking a bit thin. However, we have had a good response to this call—thank you all so much!—so the problem may be resolved already. I only have a few months left.
If you would like to donate and are unsure how to proceed, I would suggest waiting just a few days. Dustin will work out what has been donated already and we can see if any more is needed.
