Questions & Answers
Why does Pariyatti need donations?
A. Pariyatti is a charitable, nonprofit, educational support system for the Dhamma community. Our services go beyond publishing, selling, and distributing books. Even if we just sold books, the economic and technological conditions of the world today would likely prevent continuation of Pariyatti's vision. Small independent book sellers rank high among businesses closing in recent times. In every community, local independent bookstores have found it difficult to survive price competition from the giant online stores.
One of Pariyatti's commitments to the Dhamma community is to ensure that the more than 1,000 pertinent titles in stock, including those we import, remain available. We can do this because general costs of overall operations are kept low and are supplemented with charitable donations.
Why don't book sales cover your costs?
A. Book sales revenues cover a part of a broader range of services Pariyatti offers. Because of the large number of specialized, hard-to-find, low-volume titles maintained by Pariyatti, and the general economics of the publishing industry today,we would need to double book prices to break even financially. This would defeat one of our purposes: to support the Dhamma community as broadly as possible. In addition, there are costs for providing the free services and publications.
I see that your largest expense is for staff. Can you tell me more?
A. Wages are the largest expense for most service-oriented businesses, education or information-driven organizations, and nonprofits. Keeping Pariyatti's services available on a consistent basis has been in the past the responsibility of five to six employees experienced in publishing, importing, warehousing, digital production, order processing, wholesaling, retailing, fulfilment, communications, software and website administration, and operations. Pariyatti employees are paid less than industry standards for similar positions. Due to the changing trends in the publishing and book world, and an effort to streamline our operational costs, in April 2011 Pariyatti has reduced it's staff to three full time employees, covering a wide scope of Pariyatti's needs. What makes this feat possible to cover the workload for now? Volunteers! Pariyatti's growing team of volunteers consists of highly skilled technical advisers, content providers, fundraisers, programmers, videographers, Pali scholars, environmentalists, educators, software experts, authors, engineers, students and people from several countries. With your help, we hope to continue to bring more Dhamma resources to the world, building an online learning center and by providing even more opportunities to volunteers to serve, and reestablishing a full staff to spread out the work. Thank you for your interest in Pariyatti. You can help as well by either donating to support operations, and programs, or offering your graphic design, writing, or fundraising skills and time in support of Pariyatti.