Project Catalyst Gains Support From BCA National Board

Project Catalyst, the BCA’s ambitious five-year initiative that calls for overhauling the dues assessment model, reversing declining membership and increasing transparency, won the support of the National Board on June 6.

After a lengthy and thoughtful discussion largely centered over security and privacy issues, the delegates approved a memorandum of understanding (MOU) covering Project Catalyst’s major points. The meeting was held in-house at the BCA’s Jodo Shinshu Center in Berkeley, California.

The BCA President spoke forcefully about the urgency for the National Board to support Project Catalyst amid the continuing decline in membership numbers and his previous statements about the BCA being at “an inflection point” in its 125-year-plus history.

“If we don’t do something, if we don’t do something radically different, the agenda for this meeting will look radically different than it looks today — and I’m being realistic about what that looks like,” BCA President Glenn Inanaga said. “The trend is undeniable.

“This isn’t a fly-by-night discussion,” he continued. “This is an intentional structure and strategy to turn the tide (on membership) and that doesn’t happen here in Berkeley or in this building. The tide changes when we do something different on the local level. The only thing we can do in this room as a National Board is to make it easier for folks at the local level and create the space for people to choose growth. The fact of the matter remains that this is a National Board in this room, and we make national decisions, and we’re going to make a change in national strategy for the purpose of ensuring that we’re going to be here for another 125 years or more.

“If we play on the defense all the time, we are never going to win,” Inanaga said. “So that would be my request of everybody. It’s a hard conversation to go back to members and say that the BCA is taking a more proactive role engaging with individual members, but you know what? I’m up for it and I think the people at this (Executive Committee) table are up for it, and I think the staff is up for it, and I think the question for our National Board is, ‘Are you ready for this, too?’” 

Project Catalyst was unveiled at the National Council Meeting in Renton, Washington, on Feb. 14, along with a set of sobering statistics showing BCA’s continuing trend of declining membership numbers and how they, in turn, impact the organization’s overall finances and future.

The BCA has gone from 11,822 members in 2019 to 10,146 members in 2023, a 14% decrease. The trend continued with 9,457 members in 2025, a 20% decrease from 2019.

Of the BCA’s 58 temples and churches, 10 showed an increase while 47 temples showed a decrease, and the number of temples with fewer than 100 members rose from 25 to 28 from 2024 to 2026.

By approving the MOU, Project Catalyst will now go to local temples and churches — and the Sangha members — for discussion and feedback, with a timeline of final approval at the National Board Meeting in December and the 2027 National Council Meeting. 

Project Catalyst would begin with the 2027-2028 fiscal year and continue through the 2032-2033 fiscal year.

A key provision of Project Catalyst will begin in September, when the BCA will calculate an initial baseline for each member temple and church, based on an average of what each temple was assessed over the past five years by the BCA. Also, in September, the initial baseline will be increased by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) Escalation to become the assessment to be charged in April 2027.

And, every subsequent September, a new current assessment will be calculated by applying the CPI Escalation. 

The current assessment will be split into 12 monthly payments to be paid by each temple beginning in April.

Project Catalyst separates temple dues assessments from the temple membership counts.  This is a path for all of the BCA to focus on the engagements every temple has with every individual in their extended communities. In order to develop new growth initiatives, every temple and church needs to provide the BCA with information on all community members with whom they engage. This information will be critical to engaging with temple communities and developing engagement platforms and programs that will foster future growth.

“For the first time, in a long time, this measure will actually show how many people are affiliated in Nembutsu teaching across the United States, at least within the BCA, not just relying on who the paid members are,” Inanaga said. “I think it’s important for all of us to know how many lives we’re touching and to make sure that we’re having engagement and communication with as many people as possible.”

To assist this effort, Inanaga said, the Project Catalyst effort will be hiring a programming or membership coordinator to strategize outreach and communications to individual members and engage them with the BCA’s events and programming. He said the new position would be funded with a Dharma Forward grant. 

During the meeting, there were concerns expressed by some over the security of collecting and sharing membership information. Tomoya Ryan, of the Fresno Betsuin and the Senior YBA, asked whether the BCA would implement safeguards protecting membership information. 

Larry Handa, of the San Jose Betsuin and the Coast District, noted that some members decline to share their emails or phone numbers with the district, let alone the BCA. Handa opposed an opt-out option for membership. Inanaga believes that members understand that they are joining a BCA temple or church when they sign up for membership.

“I think one of the tenets of Project Catalyst is this idea that we do need to start with engagement as the goal and to not necessarily focus on the restrictive aspect of private information description when somebody signs up to be a member at one of our (BCA) affiliate temples,” Inanaga said.

Cheral Tsuchiya, of the Twin Cities Buddhist Sangha, spoke about trust and transparency. 

"What I'm taking out of this conversation is that the Executive Board has a big job ahead to gain the trust of member temples and churches,” she said. “You will have to communicate how Project Catalyst will be in their best interests,"

“It is about extending trust,” Inanaga said. “I’d like to think that over the last decade that the BCA has done a much better job of explaining and having transparency around what we’re doing.

“We’re taking a little bit of a gamble,” he said. “We’re extending trust on our side to say that we’re going to fix the revenue stream before we know how the expense allocations are happening and how membership is going up or down. So, for five years, the BCA and the national organization staff is committed to holding the line (on expenses). And that’s a huge statement because I don’t know that we could have said that a decade ago.

“I think there is an extension of trust for the BCA,” Inanaga continued. “We’re asking for an extension of trust, as Cheral might say, for local members, temples and churches. I think we’ve hit a membership level that is very tough, very challenging to think about.”

Steve Terusaki, the immediate past BCA President, spoke in support of Project Catalyst and noted a parallel with the past effort and discussion surrounding Dharma Forward, which turned out to be a highly successful BCA initiative.

“The last time we had a big challenge like this was in 2019, when we launched Dharma Forward,” Terusaki said. “We had lots of naysayers, we had lots of people saying you’re never going to raise $15 million, you’re crazy. Yet after six and a half years, we were able to achieve the number that was well beyond the target. 

“It’s because of our commitment to what we wanted to see for the future, and similarly, Project Catalyst is very much a sense of what do we see for our vision for the future for the BCA. We have to step forward and take up that challenge and each of us sitting in this room needs to move this forward.

“Like Dharma Forward, we all came together, we all supported each other and ended up with a campaign that raised $16.6 million — and it changed the whole conversations that we had at the National Board and National Council meetings,” Terusaki said. 

“We used to worry about whether we could pay for replacing a refrigerator or repairing a leak,” Terusaki continued. “With the ability for us to be in a whole different financial situation because of Dharma Forward, we can actually breathe more easily. We have the capacity to know that we have a different kind of financial cushion and it changes our whole perspective on what the future for BCA is. Similarly, Project Catalyst can add that same impact to how we see the impact that followers of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism can have in the United States going forward.”

Inanaga thanked the Project Catalyst Working Group: Executive Director Gayle Noguchi, President-elect Darlene Bagshaw, Treasurer John Arima, and Seabrook Buddhist Temple Vice President Miye Jacques.