New Rama Materials Marketing Campaign

(By Lenz Foundation)  The Frederick P. Lenz Foundation for American Buddhism (the “Lenz Foundation”) is proud to announce that a new and expanded Rama Materials Marketing Campaign (RMMC) launched on October 1, 2018 and will run through February 9, 2019 (Rama’s birthday). The goal of the campaign is to raise money to promote Rama’s teachings.

The RMMC fund was created in 2011 by The Lenz Foundation in collaboration with the Rama Meditation Society (RMS) in order to support the marketing, use and promotion of Rama’s materials, including books, audio talks, videos, and music. Over $200,000 was raised.  The fund has been administered by the Lenz Foundation with advice from the RMMC Committee, a group of Rama students who contributed significantly to the campaign. 

With this cycle of RMMC funding, we are expanding the scope of the campaign. There will be two buckets of funding and donors can contribute to one or both. One bucket of matching funds will be available for the purpose of promoting Rama’s materials. The general marketing materials bucket will provide matching funds up to $100,000, for a potential total of $200,000.

The second bucket is based on the belief that a strong group of Rama teachers and senior students will increase the use of Rama’s materials. The second bucket of matching funds will support the emerging federation of teachers and students known as the American Buddhist Society (ABS).  The ABS bucket will provide matching funds up to $25,000 for a potential total of $50,000.

Donors to the RMMC fund can support materials, the ABS or both.  In either case, what you contribute will be matched by the Lenz Foundation for a maximum match of $125,000.  Thus we have the potential for a total of $250,000 to work for the promotion of Rama’s teachings.

Over the past seven years, many creative and high impact projects have been funded by the RMMC.  RMS posted a Recent Blog summarizing these activities and expenditures. Every single creative and worthwhile idea that was presented to the RMMC committee was funded. And as a result, we believe Rama’s name and teachings as well as positive branding have become prevalent in the Buddhist community and reached the public.

The following are some initial ideas on how the 2019 RMMC fund can further promote Rama’s teachings:

  • Continue online advertising and hosting fun events like Hackathons (where we give out books or music). We welcome your input on advertising and promotional venues.
  • Invest in advanced search engine optimization of Rama related sites so that friendly and informative sites come up to the top when searching for Rama’s name.  
  • Leverage new technologies and emerging social media platforms.   Raise awareness of the new app.
  • Redesign and produce new physical versions of Rama’s talks and music in a 21st century format.
  • Assist the Rama Meditation Society in funding a redesign of the Resource Library.
  • Continue handing out free copies of Surfing and/or Snowboarding at coding hackathons, snowboarding movie premieres or other events. 
  • All fun ideas involving new ways to package and present Rama’s teachings are within the realm of funding by the RMMC.

We look forward to an exciting, innovative, collaborative 2019 RMMC campaign!  Please see the Donation Page on our website. If you have any questions, please email us at info@fredericklenzfoundation.org. Thank you!