A Few Honest Words About Money

Where the money goes

Donations to Kinfonet are used for the following, in roughly this order of priority.

1. Running retreats

Food and provisions, rent for borrowed venues, travel for organisers, printed material, audio equipment for the dialogue hall, and the simple costs of keeping a retreat going for several days at a time.

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2. Making sure no one is turned away because of money

This is the part that matters most, so let me describe it carefully.

Our retreats run on a fixed contribution that covers the actual costs of food, accommodation, and the running of the centre. For many people this is affordable. For some — students, young seekers, people between jobs, people supporting families on a single income — it is not.

We do not want anyone who is genuinely serious about inquiry to cancel a retreat because they cannot afford it. We have seen this happen. A person reads K for years, finally finds the courage to come, looks at the contribution, and quietly steps away. That is the loss this fund is meant to prevent.

A part of every donation is set aside for exactly this purpose. When someone writes to say they cannot pay the full contribution, we look at what they can give — sometimes a little, sometimes nothing — and the rest is covered by what donors have given. The participant arrives. The retreat happens. The donor's gift is what made it possible.

( A note on seriousness, said gently

This support is not unconditional, and we feel it is honest to say so. We ask, simply, that the person's interest in inquiry is real — that they have read something of K, sat with the questions, and are coming to look rather than to escape. We are not gatekeepers of seriousness, and we are aware that no one can measure another's depth. But we ask. A short conversation usually tells us what we need to know.

This is not because we think money should be earned through worthiness. It is because the fund is small and the people who give to it have given thoughtfully, and we want their generosity to reach those for whom the retreat will actually matter. )

If you have ever wondered whether your donation reaches a real person — this is where it does.

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3. The website itself

Kinfonet is, before anything else, a website. The retreats happen in physical places, but the people who find them, the conversations that begin, the readings that are shared, the dialogue forum, the recordings of past retreats — all of this lives online. So a meaningful part of every donation goes simply to keeping the platform running: domain, hosting, email, storage for audio and video, the dialogue forum, and online events.

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4. Reaching the people who don't yet know this exists

This is the section that requires the most honesty, because it is where the largest portion of donations is currently spent.

K's teachings are not famous in the way other spiritual traditions are. Most people in this country have never heard his name. Of those who have, most have never read a page. Of those who have read, most have never sat with another person and inquired aloud. Each of those gaps is wider than it should be, and Kinfonet exists to narrow them.

The hard truth is this: in 2026, narrowing those gaps means using the internet the way the internet actually works. It means social media. It means search. It means paid promotion of pages, posts, and videos so that someone in a small town who has just read a Krishnamurti quote and wondered what is this can find their way to a retreat, a dialogue, a book.

We could refuse to do this. Some thoughtful people would say we should. Their argument is that K's work should spread by its own quiet weight, person to person, and not through the same machinery that sells phones and political opinions. We have considered this seriously. Our answer, after consideration, is that the cost of refusing — leaving K's work invisible to almost everyone who might be helped by it — is higher than the cost of using these tools carefully.

So the largest single category of donor money currently goes to:

• Promoted posts and videos on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms

• Search advertising so that someone Googling "Krishnamurti retreat" or "what is self-inquiry" can find Kinfonet

• Production of short videos, written posts, and reading material designed to introduce K's work to people encountering it for the first time

• The technology behind the website itself — analytics that tell us which posts actually reached people, tools that let us send a thoughtful newsletter rather than a careless one, the apps and services that make it possible for one person to do the work of a small team

How we try to do this carefully

We do not use bait. We do not promise transformation, peace, healing, or breakthroughs. We do not buy followers or fake engagement. We do not run advertisements that target people in moments of grief, anxiety, or vulnerability. We do not promote retreats by promising what retreats cannot deliver.

What we do try to do is share K's actual words, the actual texture of inquiry, the actual nature of what happens at a retreat — and let the reader decide if any of it speaks to them. If it does, they find their way here. If not, they scroll past, which is also fine.

Why donors should know

If you give to Kinfonet without knowing this, and later see an Instagram advertisement we have placed, you might reasonably feel that your donation has been misused. So this is the page that tells you, before you give, exactly what your money is doing. A part of it is reaching someone you will never meet, in a town you may never visit, who is about to read a sentence of K's for the first time because of you.

That is, to us, the closest thing this work has to a quiet purpose.

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5. A basic-needs allowance for those who give their time fully

This is the sentence that requires honesty.

I — Shubham — currently support my family through freelance IT work, and I give most of my remaining time to Kinfonet without payment. As Kinfonet grows, a small basic-needs allowance from donations would let me reduce freelance work and give more time here. The same applies to a few volunteers who travel from other cities to help with retreats; we would like to reimburse their travel and basic expenses, which we currently cannot always do.

What this is not:

• Not a salary

• Not a market-rate income

• Not a way of building personal wealth from this work

What it is:

• A modest amount, declared openly in the accounts each year, that covers basic living expenses for those whose time is spent here

If donations grow, this allowance does not grow with them. It is capped at what is genuinely needed. The rest goes to the work.

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5. Towards a permanent space

The longer vision is a study centre — a piece of land, a few simple buildings, a place where retreats can happen without renting and where people can come for longer stays. This is years away. A small portion of donations is being saved towards that.

How accounts will be shared

Once a year, an honest summary of all donations received and how they were spent will be published on this page, including:

• Total received

• Total spent on retreats

• Total given as participant support, with the number of people helped

• Total taken as basic-needs allowance, by name

• Total spent on infrastructure

• Amount saved towards a permanent space

This will not be a chartered-accountant audit. It will be the truth, written down. If at any point you want to ask about a specific entry, you may.

How to donate

Donations are received manually for now. There is no payment gateway yet.

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From within India — UPI, GPay, PhonePe, Paytm, or direct bank transfer.

From outside India — international bank transfer for now. A PayPal account is being set up and will be available shortly.

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