We’ve told the story of the donor, Ven. Lama Dondrup Dorje, who made up the all-important difference!  But we feel that, no matter the amount of the individual donation, what really counts is the motivating energy behind it!  For instance, we know of a $50 donation that came from someone who had been laid off, and had returned to school full time.  The $50 represented a week’s worth of groceries.  (Not a small offering!)

So we’d like to tell some stories about donors. (No names, of course!)

Some of the donation energy was generated by family groups:  Buddhists who are not members of our sangha, but who make regular pilgrimages to KPC to walk the stupas and make offerings at the altars.  We know of several such groups, Vietnamese and Burmese, who notified their networks and bundled their contributions together, in several cases bringing actual bundles of checks in white envelopes to the temple.

One such offering came after a family (father, mother, and pre-teen son) happened to visit during the first night of the telethon.  They were drawn in and sat in the audience.  After a while, they sent their young son forward with the cash that they had on hand.  (We invited him to ring the gong, which we did every time a donation came in,)

The second night, the father returned, this time with an envelope full of checks from his family and members of his own sangha.  We invited him to speak on camera, and his loving, spontaneous, and natural speech about the joy of offering brought tears to our eyes—something that couldn’t be scripted!  Simply the output of a life as a practitioner.

Many of the donor stories involve response during the webathon. With a live pledge appeal, inevitably there are those moments when no one is calling, and the goal thermometer is hovering at a standstill.  We tend to remember those donations that broke through when we were stalled.  One such breakthrough came on the first night, when a fifth-grader wrote in that she had broken into her piggy bank, and was donating the entire contents:  $48.  (We were not only grateful, but impressed at her savings! )

The first evening of the telethon ended with pledges for a total of $108,000.  Impressive, but not enough.  Our supporters on line, however, were growing in number as the evening went on, and people on the West Coast came home from work.  They were urging us to continue!  So we did, for a second night.

It was on the second night that we were able to announce the challenge grant made by Lama Dondrup:  to double all proceeds from the second night.  Our adrenalin was high!

The challenge grant made for an exciting second night, as the challenge in turn inspired a number of such grants:  four each for $1000. (One of them, late in the evening, offered to double any $50 donation, up to 20 donations.)  All of them were met.

Then came what seemed to be the breakthrough challenge:  a woman in Australia let us know that she had persuaded her partner (not a Buddhist!) to take out an equity loan on their house for $10,000.  He agreed–on the condition that it be offered as a challenge grant. They were willing to accept two $5000 donations to meet the challenge.  The staff on camera were feeling the clock . . . tick, tick, tick . . . .  It was by this time late in the campaign; wouldn’t anyone who had that much available have offered it by now?

No, as it happened!  Someone in fact HAD been working to scrape together a donation of that size, and, upon succeeding, called it in:  $10,000.

At that point in the telethon, the anchor was on camera, reciting the calculation:  the $10,000 donation, plus $10,000 in matching funds, in turn doubled at the end of the evening by the overall matching grant.  She announced that the $10,000 had now turned into $40,000, and remembers looking at the Ani who was working the camera.  She reports that they locked eyes, both of them realizing that a miracle was about to take place!

In fact, the evening ended with $205,000 pledged, once the matching grant was calculated in.  Still not enough, but there were 24 hours to go . . . .

And then Ven. Lama Dondrup Dorje notified us of his intention to make up the difference.  The miracle was in place!

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