I should probably admit this up front: I didn't donate a single dollar of the money SY Collective has raised this year. Not one. What I did instead was write my heart out, capture moments, edit videos, produce music, make merch — and hope my social supporters would respond to my SY Collective content.
I call myself SY Collective's errand specialist. I'm the workhorse. I tell the stories, and I turn ideas into calls to action.
Here's the part that still gets me: most of the people who actually gave don't live anywhere near Seattle. What they have instead is something older than geography — they're part of the same spiritual community I am, students of Master Sheng-yen Lu, who's based right here in Redmond, WA. Most of them make it a point to visit at least once a year, not for the city, but to see him and pay their respects. It's been this way since the '90s — SeaTac customs agents have seen enough of this crowd over the decades that some of them will just ask, "Master Lu?" A nod back is all it takes, and they wave the dharma fam straight through. Roughly nine in ten of the people supporting this cause live overseas, tied to Seattle by nothing but that one shared thread. My real fundraising funnel is whatever I put out on my Facebook — just showing up in people's feeds, again and again, until enough of them decided this was worth something. Yes, sometimes it's still a booth somewhere, too — I'll be at Crossroad Farmers Market as a Community Partner on 9/8/2026, for example.
Our original quarterly goal was $1,000 — a number I genuinely thought we'd have trouble meeting. We closed out the second quarter of 2026 — our fourth quarter of fundraising since we launched back in Q3 2025 — with $8,000 raised instead. Most of it — $6,500 — came in quietly through that same network, people I've met a few times, or never, sending support because of something I posted. The rest came from two mornings of actually standing outside in Seattle: $1,000 raised at the Seattle Cherry Blossom Run in Seward Park, and a $500 gift we made to Run to End Weekend Hunger 5K. The $7,500 raised for our own cause went straight to Seattle Children's Uncompensated Care Fund, so families fighting for their kid's health don't also have to fight a hospital bill — and the $500 gift went toward Backpack Brigade's mission of making sure local kids don't go hungry over the weekend.
So what's next? I honestly don't know how long this runs. I've stopped trying to answer that, because thinking too far ahead is a good way to talk yourself out of doing anything today. The plan is the same one I started with: don't panic, don't rush, just keep doing the next honest thing.
Q3 starts tomorrow. Same posts, same mantra tracks, hopefully reaching a few more people who live oceans away but still show up for this every single year.
Thank you — genuinely — to every local Seattle supporter, and my dharma fam near or far. You're the ones actually giving. I just make the ask, showcase the merch, one post at a time.