I’ve been getting emails for about a year now from an organization calling themselves Friends of the BBT. They even mail me stuff.

Their emails and mailouts seem pretty legit and look great. On their website, it says that their mission is to “provide targeted funding to enhance and expand the work of the BBT and build a solid foundation for its future.”

And that sounds great to me. Keeping Prabhupada’s books in print is a wonderful idea. The Friends of the BBT solicit donations from devotees. Their donations page (called “Participate”) urges devotees to give so that you, the giver, “can directly connect with the mission of the BBT to fulfill your own interests in the essential work of spreading Krishna consciousness.”

On the Friends of the BBT’s front page, they explain a few of their other missions, a sanskrit school to translate all the previous acarya’s books that Prabhupada wanted to be translated,¹ an art seminar and a separate fund raising drive for the Archives.

Within the Archives article, it promises “100% of all contributions will be forwarded to the Bhaktivedanta Archives account.” Ok, fine. But if it promises that for the Archives, why doesn’t it promise that for the rest of the donated money?

For me, this raises a huge red flag. There are several reasons and this might get complicated.

The BBT exists to print and keep in print Srila Prabhupada’s books. Since Srila Prabhupada departed, other devotee’s books have been printed. I assume that they are getting paid and that the profits of their books are split between the BBT and the author.

Perhaps the BBT is top-heavy and the Friends of the BBT needed to be created to help pay for printing. Maybe the BBT was in danger of going out of business and the Friends of the BBT have stepped in to donate money to the BBT to keep it afloat.

My first problem with this is where is the money going? If I were to donate $100 to Friends of the BBT, how much of that would actually go to the BBT? How much of it would pay the salaries of the people who front Friends of the BBT? And after their cut is skimmed off the top, how much of what is left of that $100 would go to printing Srila Prabhupada’s books and how much would go to the salaries of the people in charge of the BBT? Of the $100 that I donated, how much of it would allow me to “directly connect with the mission of the BBT to fulfill your own interests in the essential work of spreading Krishna consciousness.”?

Secondly, the BBT was created by Srila Prabhupada to print and reprint his books. While he was on the planet, only his books were printed. No other devotees published books under the BBT. Srila Prabhupada encouraged his disciples to write and even publish their own books², but would these have been published by the BBT?

By only printing Srila Prabhupada’s books, this possible lack of money could be solved. All of these books are written and the copyrights are maintained by the BBT. No royalties payments go to the author (Srila Prabhupada). The BBT keeps 100% of the profits, putting them into keeping the books in print.

But even that, as it stands now, wouldn’t be enough. Lastly, and this is the big one: salaries.

People who are working at the BBT are receiving salaries. I guess that wouldn’t be too big of a deal, financially speaking. If the people who worked there weren’t taking in too much money for their own, the business of BBT could still go on, though it would probably be difficult to publish only the books of Srila Prabhupada and pay everybody.

But even that isn’t exactly how it’s supposed to be.

In both 1975 and 1977, Srila Prabhupada stated that devotees who work for the BBT should not receive salaries. The BBT funds are meant for printing and the construction of temples. “Not for salaries.” Srila Prabhupada wanted to know why “so many people been appointed without my permission.” Stating, “We do not want any salaried men.” He concluded this letter to Radha Ballabha by saying “This extravagancy must be stopped immediately.”

Srila Prabhupad was very serious about this.

In 1975, he said in a letter to Kirtiraja, “And definitely, the BBT cannot pay any salary to anybody.” However, in April of 1977, the BBT was having a problem with Hayagriva “doing nothing and taking money” (Srila Prabhupada’s words). Tamala Krishna explained that Hayagriva’s salary had been stopped.

Two weeks later, Srila Prabhuapda, in a conversation with Tamala Krishna again reiterated, “…in our BBT it is clearly written that ‘Fifty percent for printing book, fifty percent for…[building temples]‘³ So you cannot violate this. Those who can give voluntary service, ‘Welcome.’ Otherwise we don’t require. At least they should not be given any salary. That is very bad. This is against principle.”

So here’s my revolutionary idea. Go back to the way it was. Only Srila Prabhupada’s books should be printed, nobody should be taking a salary.

And no Friends of the BBT. From all appearances, some unscrupulous people are making money off of donations to the BBT (with ISKCON’s and the BBT’s full consent). Somehow this seems even worse than people at the BBT taking salaries.

Friends of the BBT has to be a scam. The only way I’d see it otherwise would be if the people who run the Friends of the BBT wouldn’t be taking a cut, if all the money were going directly to the BBT. Like I said, I don’t know if they’re getting a piece of the action, but the wording on their website leads me to believe that it’s true.

If the BBT were to only print Srila Prabhupada’s books, there would be very little overhead. If they were not taking salaries, there would be even less overhead. BBT’s financial problems simply wouldn’t exist, just like they didn’t exist when Srila Prabhupada was with us.

But when you start publishing other devotees’ books, which “require” the authors and editors to be paid, and when you start paying the people who work at the BBT, it becomes top heavy and requires more money to stay afloat. This seeming lack of funds creates the false need of another organization (Friends of the BBT) to keep it going.

However, this need for a charity organization to keep the BBT alive isn’t really a need at all. If the BBT would do things as Srila Prabhupada wanted, there would be no “need” for any of this. Is this such a difficult thing to understand?

1. Is this a true statement? I’ve never heard about Prabhupada wanting other books to be translated. I think it’s great that they’re being translated, but don’t feel the BBT is the publisher to release them. I certainly don’t feel it’s right to just say that Prabhupada wanted them to be translated if he didn’t say that he did. [↩]
2. Kirtananda’s Christ and Krishna is a good example of this. [↩]
3. Srila Prabhupada stopped short of saying what the other fifty percent was for, because he had stated it many times before. The other fifty percent was for building temples. [↩]