e believe that transparency is a cornerstone of every good organization. It lays the foundation for open communication, minimizes personal enrichment at the cost of the many and reduces the risk of organizations becoming cults. For these reasons, at Relight, we try to make the whole organization and our decisions as transparent as possible while still protecting the privacy of the individual.
By having the power to decide which places are published on Relight and which are not, we recognize having a great responsibility. Should we publish the yoga studio next door, the ayahuasca retreat center or only more traditional places like zen monasteries? As a first step, we decided to mostly publish places at which traditional spiritual paths flow. These are the spiritual/mystical paths of the great world religions like zen, (original) yoga or sufism. Our next step is to build a board of advisors with whom we will work out a specific set of criteria for the places. It is very important to us not to exclude any genuine spiritual places. But what is 'genuine' you may ask? Well, we are working on that answer.
Right now, the only income streams at Relight are the pockets of the two founders. In order to give Relight more financial freedom, we are working on a booking feature for retreats and potential cooperation with foundations.
At the moment, our monthly cost is $188. This money goes into hosting the website and other tools to keep Relight running. All the web design, administrative and organizational work is done voluntarily by the team. For the exact positions the money is spent for, see the table below.