About Beliefnet

Our mission is to help people like you find, and walk, a spiritual path that will bring comfort, hope, clarity, strength, and happiness.

Whether you're exploring your own faith or other spiritual traditions, we provide you inspiring devotional tools, access to the best spiritual teachers and clergy in the world, thought-provoking commentary, and a supportive community.

Beliefnet is the largest spiritual web site. We are independent and not affiliated with any spiritual organization or movement. Our only agenda is to help you meet your spiritual needs.

Awards:
Beliefnet’s commitment to quality has been recognized with all the major awards for online excellence. Beliefnet won the prestigious National Magazine Award for General Excellence Online in 2007, and was one of five finalists for that award in 2002, 2004, and 2006. The site won the 2003 Online Journalism Award for General Excellence Online, the highest honor given by the Online News Association, and in 2008 received the ONA’s top award for online commentary. Beliefnet has won both the Webby and Webby People’s Choice awards for best Spirituality Website. The site’s editors and contributing writers have also been recognized with numerous individual awards for analysis and commentary.

About Our Advertisers
Beliefnet receives a significant percentage of its revenue from advertising. Like other media companies, we have to balance our need for happy advertisers with our commitment to editorial integrity.

For us, the formula is pretty simple: editorial decisions must not be dictated by advertisers. Our first responsibility is to our readers and we make our editorial decisions based on what we think users will want.

But that's not to say that we don't try to help our advertisers on the site. For instance, if our editors have decided that a book excerpt is a good one, we will sometimes notify advertisers that we are doing so, in part in the hope that they will advertise. If we are running a negative review of a book, we might let an advertiser know as well, in case they want to provide a countervailing viewpoint in ads. We also generally provide "Buy It" buttons next to books. Beliefnet does get a small fee from Amazon each time someone clicks to them from our site. But it is a tiny amount and we use these "buy it" buttons primarily as a service to users (who often want to know how to buy it), writers (whom we often don't pay very well and for whom this is an extra benefit), and for sponsors.

Political Advertising on Beliefnet
Beliefnet does not endorse political candidates or parties. We do accept political advertisements from political campaigns or issue groups and offer equal time to opposing campaigns that also wish to purchase advertising.

Beliefnet’s Founding

Beliefnet was founded in 1999 by Steven Waldman and Robert Nylen.

Nylen served as Beliefnet’s first president and as a director of the company until its sale to News Corp in 2007. He also co-founded New England Monthly, and Media & The Law, and helped launch Waterfront Media, Inc., for which he serves as a director. He was consumer ad manager for U.S. News & World Report and associate publisher for Texas Monthly. Over the last 15 years, he has consulted to dozens of media companies, some tiny, some huge. As a freelance writer, he's contributed to the New York Times, Boston Globe, Fortune, American Lawyer, Folio, Adweek, and other newspapers and magazines. He recently served as town moderator of Ashfield, Massachusetts. Nylen was a combat platoon leader in Vietnam, where he earned two purple hearts and a bronze star with V device. He’s the author of the forthcoming memoir, Guts: One American Guy’s Reckless, Lucky Life (Random House).