Anicca vata sankhara — “Impermanent, alas, are all formations!”

As an Urban Community Dharma Center we are continually balancing our mission to provide access to these powerful teachings with our challenges to be financially resilient as a not-for-profit organization. We have a commitment that no one is turned away from the teachings for lack of funds and have an open scholarship policy that ensures that our programs remain accessible to all.

We also carefully review how much our teachers receive and have sometimes supplemented their donations to ensure that they are given sufficient economic support.

In researching some of our sister Insight centers around the country and after careful deliberation, we have decided to adopt a registration model that includes teacher support. The details are as follows:

• Starting in 2014, most courses, daylongs and other programs at NYI that have a registration fee will be set at prices which will be divided between the center and the teacher.
• These prices have been calculated to be on par with our current prices when using the current lowest suggested donation for the teacher.
• Programs with monastics will continue to be on the dana model where teacher support is not included and participants will be invited to offer support to the teacher. In addition, we are inviting teachers to use the dana model if they so choose. Therefore some registration-based programs will also use the old pricing structure and allow participants to make an offering to the teacher. This will be indicated on each event page.
• We will continue to have all sitting groups, silent daylongs and many other offerings completely by donation.
• We will continue our commitment to turning no one away from the teachings for lack of funds.

We are confident that this model will be more beneficial for all involved and as mentioned is the model used by many of our sister centers including in Cambridge, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and others.

Thank you for your patience as we make this transition.