Banner Photo Credit: Aarón Blanco Tejedor
Our Mission
At the Boundless Love Project we seek to create a global Beloved Community where all life thrives. We want all people to have food, shelter, health-care, loving and supportive communities, stable and peaceful environments, clean air, clean water, a healthy climate, and meaningful work that benefits all life and harms none. We want to live in harmony with the animal nations, appreciate all they have to teach us, respect them and allow them to live lives appropriate to their needs without causing them harm or violence -- as individuals or species. We want many various cultures and societies which value, appreciate, respect, and honor the dignity of all life.
With this global vision, we act locally to create models of Beloved Community here at home. To do this, we focus on three areas of activities:
• Nurturing Self-Liberation: We provide mindfulness trainings and resources to help people use loving intentions, mindfulness, and inquiry to integrate their traumas, transcend unskillful conditioning, and generate insights that liberate themselves from mental and emotional suffering. As a result, they shed fear, anger, and overwhelm, and enjoy a life filled with more love, peace, compassion, courage, and joy.
• Training Activists in Principled Nonviolence: We provide trainings and resources in the strategy and use of principled nonviolence to help activists, reformers, and healers of all kinds be more loving, compassionate, and skillful. As a result, their advocacy work becomes more effective, sustainable, and healing for their communities and themselves.
• Advocating for Social Justice and Providing Joyful Service: To end structural and institutional violence, we ally with movements and campaigns nonviolently working to end violence, injustice, and oppression while creating beloved community. We also volunteer our time to joyfully serve those in need.
2020s Accomplishments
We do our best to integrate all three aspects of mindfulness, nonviolence, and social justice into all of the activities we do. We have attempted to categorize our 2020 accomplishments under these headings, based on the activity's primary focus.
In 2019, the Boundless Love Project accomplished the following:
NURTURING SELF-LIBERATION
• We hosted 51 free weekly group meditations. Loving gratitude to Lisa Cleveland for peer-leading two-months of these, and guest teachers or graciously volunteering their time to speak; Charlie Platt who taught on self-compassion and Julien Jean-Pierre who taught on self-forgiveness. Thank you to the Dakota County Public Library for hosting our meetings early in the year before we moved onto Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Our Wellness and Liberation (OWL) activities. OWL promotes total wellness (mental, emotional, social, physical, spiritual, and community) for animal advocates and their community, and is organized by Unny Nambudiripad. Due to the pandemic, activities were curtailed, yet Unny organized two online Zoom gatherings which included meditation and socializing in February and September, and hosted a Zoom-facilitated half-day meditation retreat in April. In August, OWL members organized a socially-distanced camping trip for their membership.
• In September, we partnered with Twin Cities Nonviolence's 10 Days of Nonviolence to offer a virtual Intro to Meditation training.
• In November and December we hosted Zoom-based group meditations for members of the disability community.
• In November, we partnered with Do It Green to do an online Intro to Meditation training as part of their Green Gifts Fair.
• We also added these online resources!
- Gratitude Meditation. One of our most popular meditations.
- Learn how to deactivate your thoughts so they don't cause you to suffer.
- Resources to help celebrate passover.
- The Wisdom of Peace Pilgrim Training Series.
Training Activists in Principled Nonviolence
• In January, before the pandemic started, nonviolence trainers Michelle Wenderlich, Joe Meinholz of Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light, and Freeman Wicklund of the Boundless Love Project worked with Associate Minister Christian Briones, Community Minister Dwight Wagenius, and Team Lead Minister Sarah Campbell from Mayflower United Church of Christ in Minneapolis to offer a 5-hour, in-person training in principled nonviolence. Thirty-seven people attended.
• In September, we offered a virtual Marshal Training to teach de-escalation skills to organizers and volunteers of Compassionate Action for Animals to assist them in providing a community-organized, nonviolent, peace-keeping force for their upcoming candlelight vigil.
• We partnered with Twin Cities Nonviolence's 10 Days of Nonviolence in September to offer a virtual Principled Nonviolence training based on Dr. Martin Luther King's Six Principles of Nonviolence.
• In November, volunteers Dan Ferber and Freeman Wicklund offered three online Direct Action Strategy Trainings to explain how principled nonviolence works to win campaigns.
• We also added numerous principled nonviolence resources onto our website, including:
- Songs to Defend Democracy and Stop a Coup.
- Campaign Nonviolence 2020 Conference Recording.
ADVOCATING FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE AND PROVIDING JOYFUL SERVICE
• In January, before the pandemic started, Boundless Love Project volunteers collaborated with Feed My Starving Children and Hosana Church in Burnsville to pack nutritious, culturally-appropriate, vegan meals to deliver to families across the globe who are at risk of hunger and malnourishment.
• In March, we had a presence at the Humane Society of the United State's Humane Lobby Day to encourage legislators to oppose legislation that contributes to needless cruelty to animals, and support legislation that protects them from violence, abuse, and neglect.
• Stop Line 3! Throughout the year, we were a strong voice for a healthy climate, respecting treaties with our Indigenous siblings, protecting water, and creating Beloved Community -- all of which is threatened by the construction and use of Enbridge's proposed tar sands pipeline known as Line 3. We spoke at numerous hearings and lobbied elected leaders, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Justice, and the Minneapolis Pollution Control Agency in an effort to protect water, climate, and Indigenous rights from Enbridge's Line 3. Some of the highlights include:
- In January, Boundless Love Project Mindfulness Teacher Freeman Wicklund gave testimony against Line 3 at a hearing at the Minnesota Senate Building in St. Paul.
- In February the Boundless Love Project had a presence at MN350's protest of Line 3 in the Rotunda of the Capitol Building.
- Famous environmentalist, author, and journalist Bill McKibben retweeted one of the Boundless Love Project's Stop Line 3 Action Alerts.
- In November, the Boundless Love Project collaborated with Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light to organize a peaceful protest at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
• In October, Freeman emceed Compassionate Action for Animals' World Day for Farmed Animals Vigil.
• In October and November, the Boundless Love Project had a presence at many Lakeville demonstrations in support of racial equality.
• In December, Dharma Teachers Patrice Koelsch and Shelly Graf of Common Ground Meditation Center invited Freeman to speak on the issue of animal protection as part of their Dharma Among Us series on engaged Buddhism.
• We also added these social justice pages to our website:
- Voices of the George Floyd Memorial.
- A Talk Encouraging Nuclear Disarmament.
- A meditation for activists of the Fur-Free Minneapolis campaign, which we are a coalition partner of.
DEEP GRATITUDE TO YOU
Thank you supporting the Boundless Love Project. As a small, volunteer-led, nonprofit with BIG DREAMS, we appreciate your mindfulness practice, your goodwill, your prayers, your financial support, your participation, your volunteering, and your compassionate actions that help us create a global Beloved Community where all life thrives. Thank you!
Expenses by Category
INCOME AND EXPENSE REPORT
INCOME
Donations: $2,471.61
Interest: $0.12
Total income: $2,471.73
EXPENSE
Programs: $2,419.37 (95.8%)
Administrative: $82.32 (3.3%)
Fundraising: $22.89 (0.9%)
Total Expenses: $2,524.58 (100%)
NET BALANCE
Total Income: $2,471.73
Total Expense: $2,524.58
Net Deficit: $52.85
CASH FLOW STATEMENT
Funds at Beginning of Year: $3,297.71
Net Deficit: $52.85
Funds at End of Year: $3,244.86
ASSETS AND LIABILITIES STATEMENT
Cash Assets: $3,244.86
Other Assets: $0
Liabilities: $722.50
Net Worth: $2,522.35
FINANCIAL NOTES
The Boundless Love Project’s preferred method of operation is via a gift economy. We offer our services for free and any beneficiaries inspired to support us may give financially, volunteer, or pay the generosity forward by showing generosity towards other life forms in need.
All board members and officers, who handled the day-to-day administrative work, served as volunteers. Thank you to Colleen Wicklund (Board Member), Richard Wicklund (Board Member), Christy Schick (Board Member and Vice President), and Freeman Wicklund (President, Treasurer, and Secretary) for your service throughout all of 2020.
Our Mindfulness Teacher Freeman freely offers his teachings and trainings as a gift. When donations come in ear-marked for Freeman, they are split 50% to him and 50% to Boundless Love Project. Using this system, the stipend owed to Freeman for 2020 is $722.50, which at the time of this report, had yet to be paid to him, therefore it is reflected above in the liabilities column. During 2020, at his own bidding, he was paid $0 for his services. Rest assured, he was later paid the full $722.50 during 2021.
Operating a successful organization requires administration and fundraising expenses which, when needed, are equally important as our programmatic spending. This year 3.3% of our expenses went towards administration fees, and 0.9% of our expenses went to fundraising costs.
Thanks again for all of your support. Always remember that: