Dear Friends, Supporters, and Members,

It's time for our annual November Membership Drive. For current members, it is a time to renew and evaluate your volunteer and financial contributions to the sangha. If you are new to Red Cedar, appreciate its mission, and want to offer support or become more deeply engaged, this is an opportunity to join or renew as a Member or a Friend of Red Cedar.

Last year's drive resulted in strong support from Members, Friends, and donors near and far. It is through individual financial and volunteer involvement that we were able to keep our beautiful new Hall open and accessible this last year. As we have no major benefactor, we rely happily on many smaller contributions to keep our programs vibrant, our rent paid, and our scholarship programs running. This broad base of support is our stability and foundation. And thus, we would like to extend a heartfelt thank you for your contributions, not only to Red Cedar Dharma Hall, BIMS and RCZC, but to the perpetuation of the Buddha Dharma.

Three ways you can help:

As a Member:
Member benefits include Access to the Hall for individual use; eligibility for scholarships and grants; the option to spend the night at the Hall when needed; access to Tim, RCZC's resident priest, and our lay teachers, Nancy and John, for practice discussion; periodic informative e-mails, including Tim's monthly Responding Gate for your reflection.

As a Friend of Red Cedar:
Friends offer financial support for the continued existence of the Red Cedar Dharma Hall as the home base for the sanghas that practice there and for its contributions to our local communities. Friends may live locally or at a distance and are typically less involved with the operations of our local sangha. Friends receive fewer communications from us; we appreciate you and try to respect your space.

As a One Time Donor:
Donations can be mailed to our P.O. box above or made at the website.

You'll find both Friend and Membership forms enclosed for mailing or you can complete them online at www.redcedarzen.org. Please note the updated membership levels on these forms and also the current financial details on the back of this page. Do consider the monthly automatic payment options through WECU and Paypal. They make payments easier for you and processing easier for the membership volunteers.

If you wish to keep your Member or Friend status unchanged, we'd still appreciate the receipt of a new form to help us clarify your intentions and confirm the information in our database for 2010.

No matter the amount, please know that every gift is valued and appreciated! Thank you very much,

John Keith & Kathy McKenna,

Membership Workgroup

Dear Dharma Friends,

That our Soto Zen sangha in Bellingham continues to grow and thrive is a great source of happiness and wonder to me. By continuing to offer Zen practice in the gentle and steady style of Suzuki Roshi we touch many lives and offer something the world really needs.

If you have been a Member or Friend of the sangha I want to thank you so much for your contributions of money, time, and your good spirit. If you appreciate what we’re doing and would like to help us continue I hope you’ll consider renewing or joining us during our November Membership Month this year.

We are starting our 19^th year of existence (wow!) and our third year at Red Cedar Dharma Hall: our first accessible and truly welcoming meditation space. We’ve continued this last year to offer Zen meditation four to five times per week. We’re lately putting extra attention into making our noon-time meditation on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday accessible and open to the community. More regular introduction to Zen classes are being held. We offered three retreats with Norman Fischer, including our largest Samish Island Sesshin ever, and for the first time this summer a formal Zen sesshin without Norman which I led. We also had three Zen classes this year (with me, Nancy Welch, and our shuso Lee Nelson) with hopes for more classes next year.

I am also glad to report that John Wiley and Nancy Welch are doing extra training with Norman Fischer this year and next in preparation for their Lay Entrustment which will be in May 2010. This empowers them further as lay teachers of Zen. Soon after that Chris Burkhart ordains as a priest. And next summer I will begin training in preparation for Dharma Transmission with Norman.

As you’ll see from the financial picture on the back of the letter from our Membership Workgroup we’re doing okay. We’re in the black and making the rent. I am so happy that we were able to bounce back this quickly from the loss of half of the expected donation from the Earth Room project which helped us in moving into the new Hall. Actually I’m quite amazed, I assumed we’d need to dip deeply into our reserves before we could become truly self-sufficient.

There were many important lessons learned from our adventure with the Earth Room partnership. (And I am grateful to that donor for helping us get into our new space even if the whole thing didn’t run according to plan.) The biggest lesson is to rely on ourselves. To build our foundation on many small, steady donations from our most stable source of support: our Members and Friends.

It’s been an exciting and challenging couple of years for us. I hope that this next year can be a time of settling and returning whole-heartedly to the central point of our practice. The commitment we each make to awareness and kindness really makes a difference and the mutual support of sangha life makes the fruits of practice all the more wondrous and beneficial for ourselves and our world.

Zen and its deep and direct touching of the fundamental point is a powerful thing to practice and to share with our community. I am so happy we get to work on that project together. As the resident priest and Spiritual Director I work for you. Please do not hesitate to call or email or sign up for a Practice Discussion meeting. If there is anything I can do to support you I will.

Yours,

Rev. Nomon Tim Burnett
Spiritual Director

Red Cedar Zen Community Financial Summary for the last year
(November 1, 2008 - October 27, 2009)

Below are year totals and an "average month" of income and expense to give an idea of how we are spending and where the income is coming from. Please note that several categories of income and expense, especially retreat income, vary wildly over the year and there is really no month that looks exactly like this average snapshot.

	Monthly Average	Year Total	Notes
Income
Members and Friends	$ 1,427	$ 17,120	Thank you to 56 Members and 16 Friends during 2009!
Renting out Red Cedar Dharma Hall	$ 1,024	$ 12,282	Big thank you to BIMS who make an $800/month contribution plus our other users (Tai Chi, Yoga, etc.)
Net from Retreats, Workshops & Classes	$ 997	$ 11,960	Varies wildly month to month. Much of this is from our largest ever Samish Island Sesshin - a lot of work and an important retreat for many people.
Donations	$ 479	$ 5,748	General donations plus "Bridge Fund" appeal in response to losing the Earth Room donor.
Bank Interest	$ 34	$ 393
Total Income	$ 4,035	$ 48,424
Expense
Admin & Supplies	$ 34	$ 412
Building Improvements	$ 44	$ 529	Mostly wall trim.
Furnishings & Equipment	$ 49	$ 589	Chairs, tray tables, etc.
Insurance	$ 74	$ 883	We improved our insurance coverage this year to better protect the organization and make it possible to rent the Hall out to a wider array of community groups.
Lease	$ 2,369	$ 28,428	Lease increases 3% per year. We are starting the 3rd year of a 5-year lease with an option to renew for another 5 years.
Utilities	$ 229	$ 2,743	Varies seasonally from $125/month to $382/month
Library	$ 65	$ 777	Mostly shelving for new upstairs library.
Membership & Fundraising	$ 38	$ 456
Outreach & Sustainability	$ 47	$ 558
Website & Tech	$ 16	$ 188
Zendo	$ 43	$ 511
Total Expense	$ 3,083	$ 36,995
NET INCOME	$ 952	$ 11,429
Current Assets	$37,261

Please see the Finance Workgroup's section of the Workgroups Website for more details on our finances and budget using standard income and expense accounting. Note that several financial categories were combined in this summary for simplicity.