Today we launched a three-month drive to support the costs of our websites. Our various websites have helped guide contemporary Hinduism around the world, informing individuals, empowering institutions and clarifying Hinduism for academics, journalists and politicians. Though the work of the monks is free, there are major costs incurred which need support. We are especially struggling to improve and expand our sites and so are reaching out during the last months of the year to ask for help. Between now and December 31st, you will see new banners at the top of our pages. Bodhinatha has written a wonderful appeal, which we include below. We have taken our campaign model from Wikipedia, which is free for all the world to use (like us) and raised $7.5 million last year to keep their resources online. Our needs are far more modest. We are trying to raise $50,000 for next year’s web efforts.

---

A Message from Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami

To good souls using our websites:

Not long ago, before the now ubiquitous Internet, information was hard to come by. Sources were few but mostly authoritative, such as encyclopedias and books which had been carefully tooled by trained editors and fact checkers.

We quickly crossed the bridge to the other side, and now we find ourselves in the opposite situation. There is a monsoon of information from all kinds of sources. Every second, hundreds of millions of us around the globe are looking to the Internet for information on topics that interest us, including Hinduism. What we need now is organized knowledge that we can count on being authentic.

Our sites provide that—and they do it for free and without ads. Nowhere else will you find such a wealth of resources about our faith, carefully researched and compiled from across the globe. How important is it to you to have good resources on Hinduism online? How important is it that your friends and business associates, your children and their teachers, when doing a search about Hinduism, find a place that explains it from the inside, without academic biases or gross misconceptions?

Starting in 2010, to keep our free web resources online, we are reaching out during the last quarter of each year to ask for assistance from all of you around the world who value the spiritual and educational content on our sites.

There are two more reasons you might consider donating. One is that your donation will go straight to the enhancement of the sites and the content, not staff salaries or administrative overhead, since these sites are created and maintained by selfless monks who work for free and live simply in a verdant monastery on the island of Kauai.

The final reason to give is that a portion of your tax-deductible contribution goes into an endowment that will generate a steady income for decades to come, protecting the future of Hinduism, your religious heritage.

We are here for you today. With your help, we will be here for you for years to come, in the lives of your grandchildren—and perhaps in your next life.

Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami
Guru Mahasannidhanam of Kauai Aadheenam
Publisher of Hinduism Today

Click here to donate