Organization

The History of Buddhist Geeks

Buddhist Geeks was born out of a conversation between two friends, Vince Horn and Ryan Oelke, at a local coffeeshop in Boulder, CO. At the time, both Vince and Ryan were Religious Studies students at Naropa University, a Buddhist-inspired liberal arts school. Both Ryan and Vince felt there was something missing in the current world of Buddhist media, and so decided to launch a podcast that would have the types of conversations they were most interested in hearing. They were soon joined by Gwen Bell, who although she left around a year later, added a tremendous amount of creative energy to the project.

Launched in the beginning of 2007, the Buddhist Geeks podcast became an instant hit among tech-savvy Buddhists looking for a fresh perspective on being a modern-day Buddhist practitioner. And after a few years, and well over a million downloads of the show, it became clear that Buddhist Geeks was something closer to a movement or community, rather than just a podcast.

In 2010, and with the help of many generous community members, Buddhist Geeks expanded out to include a Digital Magazine, which would incorporate the podcast and also include loads of content from the Buddhist Geeks community itself. The dialogue that started with the podcast, has expanded out to include a wider range of voices and people, and the Buddhist Geeks Digital Magazine is the home of this broader conversation.

A “For-Benefit” Company

We’ve attempted, to the best of our ability, to have an organizational model that reflects our spiritual ideals. As a result we operate as a hybrid organization—sometimes known as a for-benefit or fourth-sector organization—an integration between for-profit and non-profit business models.

From the FourthSector.net site:

For-Benefits are a new class of organization. Like non-profits, For-Benefits can organize in pursuit of a wide range of social missions. Like for-profits, For-Benefits can generate a broad range of beneficial products and services that improve quality of life for consumers, create jobs, and contribute to the economy.

For-Benefits represent a new paradigm in organizational design. At all levels, they aim to link two concepts, which are held as a false dichotomy in other models: private interest and public benefit. For-Benefits seek to maximize benefit to all stakeholders, and because of their architecture, they can embody some of the best attributes of other organizational forms. They strive to be transparent, accountable, effective, efficient, democratic, inclusive, open, and cooperative.

It’s our strongly held intuition that true spirituality is not just about ending the false dichotomy of duality, but also in seeing through all types of false dichotomies, including those involving sexuality, power, and modernity. As a result we see our decision to be a for-benefit organization—being both legally structured as an LLC and also seeking to create benefit in the world—as a way to actively see through this particularly pernicious business dichotomy.

In terms of how we operationalize this ideal—because lets be honest, ideals mean very little unless one strives to see them manifest in the real world—there are a number of specific actions that we are currently taking. These include the following:

  • A contribution of %5 of our revenue to worthy organizations
  • An intentional and transparent organizational practiced called Holacracy
  • Transparent financial practices

%5 Contribution

To date, we have given thousands of dollars to various Buddhist-related organizations, including the following:

By contributing %5 of all our incoming revenues, our financial success becomes linked to the success of other amazing organizations and people who are supporting the spread of a mature BuddhaDharma to the West.

Holacracy

Holacracy is an organizational practice for more intelligently steering our businesses operations and governance. Vince Horn received training in Holacracy while working at another organization, and found it far healthier and transparent than traditional corporate business structures. As a result, Buddhist Geeks has adopted the practices and principles from Holacracy. Here is a short description of the practice:

Holacracy offers a comprehensive practice for governing and running our organizations. Its transformative structure and processes integrate the collective wisdom of people throughout the company, while aligning the organization with its broader purpose and a more organic way of operating. Holacracy takes the principles, ideas, and emerging mindset articulated by many cutting-edge thought leaders, and instills them in the actual structures and processes of the organization. This grounds them in practice and brings them to life, and the result is dramatically increased agility, transparency, innovation, and accountability.

If you’re interested in learning more about Holacracy, we strongly encourage you to visit Holacracy.org.

Financial Transparency

Each year, we will provide a broad financial overview, to the public, which shows how our financial resources were used in the previous year. We feel that it is important to share some of the details of our financial situation, so that those who are interested can see that we are using our resources in an accountable and healthy way.

  • 2009 Financial Report (coming soon)