Since its inception, the Boulder Zen Center has been largely self-supporting. Currently, 66% of its revenue comes from our adjacent hospitality business, the Boulder Guest House.

Aside from memberships, we typically don’t ask the Sangha for general fund support. We need to do so now because we were recently confronted with two major challenges and have incurred a $46,000 budget deficit.

1. After a boiler failure, we had to completely overhaul our setup and install a new commercial "cascade boiler system" to ensure reliable domestic hot water and heat for our hotel guests. The cost for installation and plumbing improvements was $22,000 plus $4,000 in revenue loss.
    
2. This summer, new hotels have created a surplus of rooms. Since July, hospitality businesses across town have been lowering their prices. It’s been a race to the bottom that has created a $20,000 deficit in our budget. We haven’t faced a weak market like this since the pandemic. It’s not clear when this overall market situation will get better. We may get squeezed until business picks up again in May 2025.

While we have a reserve fund that allows us to absorb emergency repairs like the boiler, the weak hospitality market in Boulder means we are facing an especially challenging winter with possibly mounting deficits.

To ensure the financial health of the Boulder Zen Center, please consider donating to our general fund at this time. 

Now, your donations will be doubled! A generous Sangha member has offered a challenge grant, so that all donations going forward will be matched one-to-one.

Each contribution, large or small, will help us weather the winter with its usual low occupancy and buy us time to work on our positioning in the market to meet this difficult moment in the Boulder hospitality business.

We do need everybody’s support right now.