Creating a T’ai Chi Chih Center: Albuquerque’s Experience

A T’ai Chi Chih Center in your community provides an ideal environment for classes and for strengthening teachers’ ties to each other and their practice. The Albuquerque Center is registered as a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization and is used for teaching classes, Association meetings, workshops and teacher trainings. Having a Center is a worthwhile goal, but one that cannot be taken on without a good deal of groundwork preparation.

The first consideration is cost. Can you generate enough income from classes and donations to afford the rent and utilities? In our case, the majority of the Center’s expense is rent (41%). The annual rent for the Center was $14,156 in 2000.

Rental income from teachers’ classes was a total of $3,861. How do we cover the shortfall? In two ways: 1. Monetary donations totaled $5,872. 2. Justin Stone has been extremely generous to our Center. He donates the proceeds of his Meditation Retreats to us and occasionally he has a gallery showing of his beautiful paintings, donating the profits to the Center. We realize that this is a risky way to finance our existence and have embarked on an ambitious plan to create a healthier financial picture.

Our goal is to stimulate more classes at the Center and at off site locations. To do this, we have created two Committees: 1. The Search and Find Committee approaches businesses and support groups such as those dealing with arthritis, lupus, cancer, writers, etc. We ask if they would be interested in a free T’ai Chi Chih presentation and demonstration. 2. The Presentation Committee educates itself on the issues and needs of each group to whom it will be speaking. When teachers pick up off site classes that were promoted by the Presentation Committee, they are asked to contribute 10% of their profits to the Center. Teachers who teach at the Center pay rent according to how many students they have and which room they rent. We have begun the Committee plan only within the last month, but already we are receiving an unusual number of calls requesting presentations, demonstrations and classes. The fruits of karma (action) are ripening!

Besides income received from teachers and donators, a healthy Center should have a significant pool of enthusiastic volunteers. Both student and teacher volunteers run our Center. They man the telephone, mail out books and class schedules, serve on the Board, publish a monthly newsletter, help organize teacher training classes and workshops, sign up to sit at Health Fairs and wherever else they see an opportunity to advertise the benefits of T’ai Chi Chih. Obviously the Center cannot afford to pay them, but it is in the nature of grateful T’ai Chi Chih practitioners to volunteer their time and not expect monetary compensation. The Albuquerque T’ai Chi Chih Association looks forward to hearing about the formation of other T’ai Chi Chih Centers around the world!