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 mission. 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 (i.e., $170,000) is for staff. Can you tell me more?
A. Wages are the largest expense for most businesses and nonprofits. Keeping Pariyatti's services available on a consistent basis is the responsibility of five employees experienced in publishing, importing, warehousing, digital production, order processing, wholesaling, retailing, fulfilment, communications and operations. Pariyatti pays its employees below average for similar operations in the industry (around $11/hour) with two long-term employees with very specialized skills earning more. Therefore, in a real sense, employees are also making a donation of time. In addtion, they have moved from somewhere else to this small rural area, in order to work at Pariyatti.