While Hymnary.org would prefer not to use advertising, the circumstances surrounding Hymnary.org's existence and continued operation currently require the funding generated through the placement of ads on the Hymnary Web site.

The usage (and the cost accordingly) of the Hymnary Web site is growing, and the Hymnary.org staff has struggled with how to deal with this growth and associated costs. Consultants and advisers have recommended to us that we make our library a fee based Web site. We are adamantly against this approach to meeting the increasing financial challenges. Instead, Hymnary.org, a non-profit organization, is supported through advertising. So we are fortunate that our users do purchase advertising. In addition, we must use ad brokers.

Hymnary.org uses the following guidelines concerning advertisements:

• We do not endorse any of our advertisers. We do not endorse their products or their services — not jewelry, not books, not software, not anything.
• We require ads to be "G-rated" or "family friendly." This is somewhat subjective and often difficult to control because Hymnary.org uses ad brokers, but we do not permit, for example, ads that would be filtered in a school setting.
• We insist that there be no motion in our ads because we feel animation makes them too distracting.
• While we do not intentionally include fraudulent or misleading ads on our site, the use of ad brokers sometimes makes it difficult to identify scams and dishonest advertising. We immediately eliminate any advertising that we determine to be dishonest.
• Our advertisers do not have any influence on the content of Hymnary.org.
• Hymnary.org is ecumenical and therefore our users are from all mainstream branches of Christianity. Some of our users and ad brokers place ads which reflect their personal perspective. We do not endorse any specific denomination nor do we endorse any user's personal opinion. Hymnary.org is a library intended to serve the whole church, not a particular viewpoint or tradition.