Turning Wheel Media Launch

Dear friends,

Buddhist Peace Fellowship is thrilled to announce a major new project: Turning Wheel Media. We invite you to take a look at it right now:

www.turningwheelmedia.org

We have transformed our award-winning journal into an online forum for socially engaged Buddhism. We will continue to seek out the best in writing, art, and multimedia offerings that explore the meeting of Buddhist practice and social action, only now it will be available to anyone at any time. As you will see, this site was built for conversation and connection.

We want to share our thinking behind Turning Wheel Media so that you will see why we are so excited about it. Turning Wheel Media is part of a larger plan for the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. For the past few years, the staff and Board at BPF have been exploring ways to update our business model, which dates from 1978. Many things have changed since 1978. In some ways we can claim success—socially engaged Buddhism is now much more mainstream! But BPF is committed to being at the edge: pioneering active ways of expressing Buddhist practice in the world. While our ways of working evolve with the times, the need for a Buddhist Peace Fellowship remains constant.

BPF's staff and Board are convinced that BPF can become a much more influential Buddhist voice for social transformation. We had to admit that in its printed form, Turning Wheel Magazine was not the most efficient use of our resources. Production and distribution costs had risen so much that publication had fallen to only two issues per year. This, plus the longstanding custom of providing the magazine as a members-only perk, prevented attracting new subscribers or ad revenues that could fund growth.

With Turning Wheel Media, we will carry the magazine’s important work into the future, and to many more people. Even more importantly, we’ll be able to interact with each other and with what we read on Turning Wheel Media, and we’ll be able to move from reflection to action, together.

Similarly, our plan calls for the Buddhist Peace Fellowship website to provide a more rapid response to breaking events. We have already started to make some of these changes. As the Occupy movement broke across the country, we curated the best media coverage (from small blogs to big newspapers), as well as publishing an opinion piece from our board, an organizational statement of our support, and regularly updated event announcements. Making our website even more efficient and responsive will take time, funding, and staffing—but we are committed and excitied to offer this way of connecting, and with your help we can get there!

Social change doesn’t happen by doing what we’ve always done. We’re proud to be a part of a Buddhist Peace Fellowship that is moving with the times—offering Turning Wheel Media is where it all begins!

With bows,

Sarah Weintraub, Executive Director
Chris Wilson, Board President