DAKSHINA & GRATUITY POLICY
One of the primary goals of our Temple has been and continues to be, to provide the highest levels of religious and other ancillary services to the devotees either at the Temple or at their homes. We are immensely pleased to acknowledge the relentless efforts of our priests and the kitchen staff, for their dedicated services. In order to improve our services further, we are now informing the devotees requesting our priests’ services outside and inside the Temple confirming the event indicating the name of the priest assigned for the service well in advance. We constantly evaluate feedback from the devotees with the objective wherever possible of improving the quality of our services and implement their suggestions. Due to the exigencies dictated by the needs of the Temple, it is not always possible to assign all the priests to provide outside services at all times, without impacting the quality of service provided in the Temple.
In order to be fair to all the priests, the Devasthãnam has established an equitable system by which the dakshina earned by all the priests for services rendered both inside and outside the Temple will be pooled and distributed equally among ALL THE PRIESTS so that “no priest is left behind”. Likewise, a separate pool has been established for the gratuity earned by the kitchen staff and the Community Center staff and funds in these pools will be equally distributed among ALL THE KITCHEN STAFF & ALL THE COMMUNITY CENTER STAFF respectively.
This pooling system and the equitable distribution of dakshina/gratuity among the staff, however, will be effective only if the devotees fully understand the rationale behind it and observe the following suggestions:
- As far as possible, please DO NOT make cash payments.
- Please DO NOT pay dakshina/gratuity or tips separately to the Priests, Cooks or Kitchen staff
- Please make your payment BY ONE CHECK payable to The Hindu Temple Society of North America or BY CREDIT CARD.
- Please ENCLOSE the check in the envelope provided and give it to the priest,
- Please COMPLETE the form printed on the envelope or the card for the Kitchen/Community Center staff showing the allocation of your payment between services, pooja samagri, dakshina/gratuity
We request ALL devotees to extend their full cooperation in this respect.
Thank you.
Temple Management