BUDDHANET.NET IS SEEKING FUNDING
Buddha Dharma Education Association Inc.

WHAT WE OFFER

• The world's premier Buddhist Web site with over 800,000 hits per day
• Unique, comprehensive directories of Buddhist centres and temples worldwide
• The net's finest collection of professional-quality PDF files of Buddhist scriptures and explanatory works aimed from children to the most learned scholar
• An unparalleled collection of other text files and information on Buddhism
• A team of professional-grade workers, many of whom are or were employees in the web, computer and graphics fields in senior capacities
• The main BuddhaNet website in Australia: www.buddhanet.net ; with a dedicated Australian website: buddhanet.org.net and potentially a multimedia website: www.buddhanet.tv
• An international network of helpers and volunteers who together constitute probably the world's greatest Buddhist information resource
• An existing potential audience of over 60 millions Buddhist online, with a further outreach of over 400 million as the Internet continues to integrate into Asian economies.

WHAT WE ARE SEEKING

• American and Singapore mirror websites with full SSI, SSL and CGI access, with a fast connection close to the internet backbone and speedy technical support 24/7, the ability to handle at least 500 MG of files and, in the future, streaming files - audio and video
• An upgrade of our existing 4-computer network and the provision of permanent cable access.
• Funding to enable us to employ and house 2 full-time workers, who will as ordained monks and nuns, be paid a stipend.

THE DETAIL

BuddhaNet was started nine years ago by the senior Australian monk Venerable Pannyavaro, a meditation teacher. At first it as a bulletin board concerned mainly with Australian issues, but growing national and international interest led to it moving online in 1995 and greatly expanding its range of resources. In a recent development, the Americas and Asia directories have been vastly expanded and new European and Africa/Middle East directories mean that the scope is now worldwide. Whether we are talking information, textual resources or directories, BuddhaNet has over thirty times the information of Tricycle and Dharmanet, its closet rivals.

BuddhaNet is made available by the Buddhist Educational Association in Sydney, which is headed by Ven Pannyavaro. The office has four computers with several volunteers with FTP privileges adding their own material, a server, and services are provided gratis by a local ISP. Funding comes by donation, mainly from Buddhist temples. The organisation is run on a shoestring.

Unfortunately, with so many time pressures on volunteers, the downloading and analysis of server logs has had to take a back seat. Our last analysis a showed over 800,000 hits a day. This was before the new directories, and the popularity of BuddhaNet has increased greatly since then. There are perhaps about 50,000,000 Buddhists online in the Western Nations: most of these are in a more educated bracket and quite web aware: most would hit BuddhaNet at least a few times a year. In addition, there is of course tremendous web interest in Buddhist countries, with the Vietnamese-Americans and Japanese leading the world in web innovation.

It is apparent that the expanding coverage of BuddhaNet has created a need for a larger organization.
The growth in centres and organizations worldwide is now so rapid that keeping up these directories is in itself a full-time job More information, including high-quality textual and graphical resources, is being sent to BuddhaNet than we have time to put online

There has been a recent move towards online meditations and teaching groups. The usefulness of these and the response to them has far exceeded everyone's expectations. In the near future, streaming video and audio presentations will become of prime importance, and Buddhanet.tv has been registered to meet this demand. One use of online meetings may be in fundraising. 'Chatathons' may be able to raise funds for much-needed hospitals and orphanages in India, Nepal, Burma and Sri Lanka.

BuddhaNet is in touch with a number of volunteers who would like to ordain as monks and nuns and work full-time on these projects. These are very creative people with excellent computer skills.

This has created an exciting opportunity for those International businesses, which have products of interest to the Buddhist consumer. In the past, BuddhaNet has insisted on a cash-less and advertising-free model. In order to keep credibility, advertising and sponsorship must be kept unobtrusive. However there is now an opportunity for your business to exchange sponsorship for a major advertising opportunity. Use of any funds will be transparent and it will be carefully accounted.

Contact details:

Please feel free to personally contact Ven. Pannyavaro by email: pannyavaro@buddhanet.net

Buddha Dharma Education Association Inc.
78 Bentley Road, Tullera, via Lismore NSW 2480 Australia
BuddhaNet Web site: www.buddhanet.net
Email: webmaster@buddhanet.net, Tel: +612 6628 2426