A commitment, stated plainly.

Why "the medium" and not a single recipient

The visual novel medium is kept alive by more than one organization. A canonical catalog, translation preservation efforts, archival work, engine maintenance, walkthrough authors, and community infrastructure all contribute in different ways. Committing to "the medium" rather than to a single recipient lets each quarter's allocation reflect where the need is most acute and most actionable, rather than locking Yumefumi into a rigid pattern that may not match reality.

Communities and projects currently in scope

The preservation program is open to any project whose work materially supports the visual novel medium. The following are explicitly in scope today:

• VNDB — the catalog authority Yumefumi is built on. Funds are held in escrow during the post-founder governance transition (see below).
• Fuwanovel — community forum and resource hub central to English-language VN reading, recommendation, and translation discussion.
• Lemma Soft Forums — long-running engine-development and creator community, foundational to the indie and doujin tier of the medium and home to much of the Ren'Py ecosystem.

This list expands as the medium evolves and as new projects emerge. Quarterly ledgers document the specific allocations per recipient — naming an organization here states eligibility, not a fixed dollar amount.

Why VNDB is the primary intended beneficiary — eventually

The catalog data underlying every page on Yumefumi — titles, dates, developers, tags, covers, route structures — comes from VNDB, maintained by volunteer effort over twenty years under the Open Database License. Yumefumi wouldn't exist without VNDB. Our intent is that the bulk of quarterly disbursement flows to VNDB over time.

Why VNDB funds are held in escrow for now

Following the death of VNDB's founder, the project is in a governance transition. Sending funds into an organization whose stewardship isn't yet clear serves neither VNDB nor the intent of the commitment. Until the stewardship is established, Yumefumi holds VNDB-designated funds in escrow. The escrow balance is published below and on every quarterly ledger. Funds release transparently once there is someone authorized to receive them.

Why from gross revenue, not profits

A commitment from profits is only a commitment if we become profitable. A commitment from gross revenue is a commitment now. Preservation is funded even if Yumefumi never makes money — embedded in the unit economics, not treated as charity that happens when there's spare change.

Why this page names eligibility but not amounts

A private commitment isn't a commitment. Publishing the amount and the ledger lets the community verify us against our word. If the ledger ever stops getting published, that's the signal. We name organizations that are in scope so readers know who the program is for; we deliberately do not publish fixed per-recipient allocations in advance. Doing so would create expectations we may not be able to meet and would force Yumefumi to make public rankings between organizations whose work is complementary. The quarterly ledger is the place where specific allocations are documented, with rationale.

What this says about our relationship with VNDB

In service of, not replacement of. VNDB is the catalog authority. Yumefumi is an editorial publication with tracking. The two serve different roles and can coexist without either replacing the other. We send revenue upstream because we depend on VNDB, because the VN ecosystem is better with VNDB in it than without, and because it is the ethical baseline for building on someone else's twenty years of volunteer work.

The first quarterly ledger will be published after the first revenue quarter. Each entry will carry: period dates, total revenue, 2% allocation, specific recipients with rationale, VNDB escrow balance change, any rollovers, and a short narrative explaining decisions made that quarter.