VividTamil is a small, community-driven cultural project dedicated to documenting and sharing Tamil cinema, music, food and everyday life. The site is run on a simple principle: if something is worth reading or listening to, it should be clearly written, respectfully presented and accessible to families in Tamil Nadu, across India and in the wider Tamil diaspora. There is no large company behind this work — just a small team led by Shobha Shankar that invests time, care and personal resources to keep the platform alive.

Your donation directly supports this effort. Hosting costs, domain renewals, backups, spam protection, basic plugins and security checks all add up over a year. On top of that, there are practical expenses for field work: travelling to cover a local festival, visiting a street food market, meeting a small cinema owner, or spending time with elders to collect song and memory stories. We intentionally keep advertising limited and clearly separated from editorial content, so reader support becomes an important way to keep the site sustainable without overloading pages with disruptive ads.

Donations are used in a low-overhead, high-impact way. A typical month might include paying for hosting and backups, covering an editor’s mobile data costs, printing a small batch of flyers for a community event, or offering a modest honorarium to a local contributor who documents recipes or festival practices that might otherwise disappear. We do not spend on luxury offices or aggressive marketing. Instead, we prioritise practical needs that help the site grow slowly and steadily: better images for cultural stories, simple audio recordings for song features, or transport reimbursement for someone who travels to interview a long-time cinema projectionist.

If you wish, you can use the “Message” field in the form to mention a particular theme you care about — for example, traditional sweets, folk music, small-town cinema stories or Tamil–English learning notes for children. While we cannot promise to run a campaign for every request, these notes help the editorial team understand what donors value most and to plan future articles, interviews and photo essays accordingly. When a donation explicitly supports a specific project, we may acknowledge that support in a short note on the relevant article or series.

Transparency is important. When you provide an email address, the system sends you a confirmation mail and, where configured, a simple PDF receipt that lists your name, amount, method and date. These receipts are mainly for your own records; VividTamil is a small cultural project and does not make any guarantees about tax-deduction status. If you require additional documentation for personal accounting, you can write to us via the Contact page, and we will respond with whatever information is reasonably available.

We also respect privacy. Names and email addresses shared through this form are used only for donation confirmation, essential follow-up and occasional important site updates. We do not sell donor lists, and we do not share individual donor information publicly without explicit permission. If you prefer to give anonymously, you are welcome to mention that in the message field — in that case we use your contact details only for the payment confirmation and any necessary clarification.

From an editorial perspective, donations do not buy positive coverage or influence. VividTamil does not publish paid “reviews” disguised as independent opinion. When a business, event or project is featured on the site, it is because the editorial team believes it will be useful or interesting for readers. If a collaboration or sponsorship is ever involved, it is labeled clearly so that readers can make their own assessment. This separation between support and editorial judgment helps maintain trust over time.

At the same time, we do believe that readers and donors are partners in this work. நிதி (funding) மட்டும் அல்ல, வாசகர்கள் தரும் நம்பிக்கை, கருத்து, ஆலோசனை — எல்லாமே இந்த தளத்தின் வளர்ச்சிக்கு முக்கியம். A kind email about how a festival article helped your child understand family traditions, a correction pointing out that a date or name needs to be fixed, or a suggestion for a new series — these responses tell us that the effort is worthwhile and help improve the quality of what we publish.

When resources allow, we experiment with new formats: short audio clips of elders explaining a song, annotated photo galleries from a temple car festival, or bilingual explainers that pair Tamil text with clear English notes for younger readers. These experiments take time — scripting, recording, editing, and preparing captions. Donations make it more realistic to devote that time consistently, instead of squeezing everything into late-night hours and weekends.

If you are not in a position to donate financially, simply reading, sharing articles with proper credit, and sending constructive feedback is already a valuable contribution. You can also support VividTamil by submitting your own community story, recipe, event report or reflective essay (with clear permissions for photos and names). The combination of reader support and modest donations is what allows an independent cultural project like this to survive alongside much bigger platforms.

Thank you for considering a gift — whether it is ₹50, ₹500 or more. Every contribution helps cover essential costs and gives the editorial team courage to plan the next set of stories, guides and playlists. If you are interested in a recurring monthly contribution or in sponsoring a specific theme such as “Tamil Food Heritage” or “Local Cinema History”, please choose “Other” or “Bank” in the payment method, add details in the message field, and we will follow up by email. For full details on data use and privacy please see our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.