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By His Holiness Sridhar Swami

There is a saying that if you have to do something, there is two ways that you can do it. One is in an organized way and the other is in a disorganized way. Now, if you do things in a disorganized way, you may not get such good results, but if you have a plan, if you have a system, a technique, a method, the chances are that you will get better results. This is common sense. 

As an institution, we are not that old. In fact, we are still in diapers practically. Still “wet behind the ears” as they say. We have got a lot to learn. Now, there is a saying that when you want to do something, suppose you have a big complicated plan, you want to build a new brand of motorcar, there is a saying about the wheels: “You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.” In other words, what I am saying is that there are a lot of people out there who have developed congregations. We are not the first people to try to get a message out to society, and we are not the first people to promote religious ideas and try to involve the world. It has been done many, many times before. 

So, we can actually learn even from our own tradition there is so much we can learn from the teachings of Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura and other previous acaryas. Especially in the modern times, although, we know that we have state of the art spiritual technology, literally we have the best religion and we have the best religious ideas. There was a survey, done in America, and they interviewed new religious movements. Like the Buddhist and some Christian groups and Mahesh Yogi and this Yogi and that Ananda. There are so many groups. There are 800 cults. They interviewed different people in society, young people especially, about these new religious movements and they asked them questions about their techniques of recruiting new people. They asked them about dress. One of the questions was, "How do you rate new religious groups as far as philosophy is concerned?” And believe it or not, they rated ISKCON as number one in philosophy. So it is a fact. We have a very good philosophy and people know it. Our books tell the story. Nobody can defeat us. But we have one minor problem: we are not very good at marketing. We are not very good at presenting and organizing. That is why we have problems in some ways, although we have state of the art spiritual technology, philosophy, we have wonderful books, and we have the best food in the whole world (Sri Krishna mahaprasada). We have so many good elements. We are relatively small still we are very enthusiastic. 

We can do better and that is what we are trying to do now, in terms of fund raising and friend-raising. Friend raising is a term that I am pretty proud of. We have done a lot of good things, a lot of right things, but we have also made a few mistakes along the way. Srila Prabhupada said that mistakes are the pillars of success, so now is the time for us to grow, even though in some ways, and in some areas of the world the temples are struggling. What are two problems that temple presidents always have? Men and money! So, believe it or not, although many of our temples are struggling in this area, there is a shortage of chips, money, and there is a shortage of manpower. Any program you want to do, there seems to be a shortage of these two things. 

But the experts say there is no shortage of money. All the books I ever read on fund-raising start off by saying that for a good cause there is no shortage of money. There is one other expert who said that: Srila Prabhupada. He said, “There is no shortage of money.” He said money is just hanging in the air; you just have to reach out and grab it. Go ahead and try! You keep your hands open and you put them up and you bring them down and close them, and there is money! Money is the honey. Also, Prabhupada said that we are not interested in money. He said that what we really need are devotees. Money will automatically follow. 

In Mumbai we have more life members than the Lions or the Rotary club. It is big, 20,000 life members. These are all people who have paid 1000 dollars or more to ISKCON. Of course, on this side of the world there is a huge Nama-hatta program with thousands of congregational Nama-hatta members. But these two areas, congregational preaching and fund development, they overlap, just like Laxmi and Saraswati. They are sisters. Saraswati is the goddess of learning and culture, like that, and Laksmi is the goddess of wealth. So, they work together and in Nama-hatta there is also a need for both of these elements. We want to go into the peoples’ homes, we want to present deity worship to them, we want to show them how to offer their food, how to chant on the beads, how to follow the four regulative principles. It is a big thing, a very big thing.