Coming up to Christmas I generally make some small donations. Some of these I ask for as Christmas gifts because I’m old and basically have very basic wants and needs so I’m hard to buy for.
Curious to hear if / what others do.
I’ve expanded my annual list to include:
- Wikipedia
- Lemmy.world (my home instance)
- Mozilla (I’m not happy with how they spend their money necessarily but I’m very thankful to have Firefox)
- Signal messenger
- A few Ukrainian things (u24.gov.ua is the official site if this is your thing but there’s a great lady on Reddit I give to occasionally too)
- The guardian (I read so many articles from there linked on here that I feel like I should and I really appreciate the lack of paywall and easy cookie rejection but never use the site logged in)
EFF Wikipedia KDE Asahi Linux Thunderbird Mozilla Archive.org Libreoffice My lemmy host Voyager
These are all one time donations, i tend to donate around 15€ a month in 5€ chunks. Some have repeated donations, other a single one. Started only a few months ago doing this
From what I’ve heard about Wikipedia’s finances they’re set for the foreseeäble and my money would be better used elsewhere.
Here’s why knowing the above i still donate to wikipedia.
Because we don’t want them to be in a position where they take money with strings attached. Imo its good for them to be reminded they serve the public first and foremost.
Yeah, Wikipedia is such a stable and positive force in the internet and directly reaches so many people. It’s easy to take it for granted but the internet would be so much incredibly worse without it.
I happily donate.
I want any organization that has shown that much commitment to making the world better to be well supported.
Here’s their audit report. 59.8% of their expenses are in
executivesalaries, a total of $107,793,960 this year. They list internet hosting as 1.7% of their expenses at $3,116,445.Good find.
That salary number is all ~700 employees, not just “executives”. That averages to about 150k apiece, not unreasonable for what is probably mostly tech workers.
The total for just the executives is $88million. Leaving $19million for the 700 employees, or $27,000 each. You are donating to executives.
Edit: whoops, it’s total salary in 2021, I misread
Good lord these numbers are ludicrous
The actual total in your own link was 5.2 million for executives. The 88 million is, again, the entire salary base just in 2021. Assuming they still had 700 employees (which is a current figure, not 3 years ago) that’s still about 120k apiece for everyone else.
I can’t tell if you’re just being disingenuous or you really can’t read your own sources…
You’re right. It’s not just executives. I believed the criticism was over inflating executive salaries, but it is indeed all salaries. Wikimedia operated with a total salary of $26million in 2014 but now has salaries totalling $107million. Quadrupling their salaries in 10 years with little explanation. You’re assuming it goes to IT infrastructure workers, but they don’t explain where it actually goes.
- Wikipedia
- Arch
- Internet Archive
- EndeavourOS
I donate to my local food bank. I worked in their hydroponics garden a few years ago and saw how much work goes into providing food for the needy. They need all the help they can get.
I also donate time and energy and a bit of money on a specific horse at the stables I volunteer at. She’s an old mare with an owner who doesn’t give a shit about her. Nobody really does anything with her other than me and another person, and that other person only lets her out to graze. I exercise the horse, groom her, give her lots of attention, and I got her a winter blanket recently.
Neither are perfect organisations but both are trying to help people in desperate situations.
I have this fun strategy, I’ll save my charity money until there is a public call for action, then I dump a larger sum all at once.
For instance my work during covid set up a (money only) drive for a food bank that corporate would match. My bosses donated 200 a piece, until they noticed that I donated 1000, then they all found it in their hearts to donate 1000 too. Turned that 1000 bucks into about 8000.
I do have some reoccurring and misc donations.
used to donate to the Blender foundation to support development, but I’m holding off till I am in a better place financially to resume my donation. Same goes for amnesty, mediapart and acf
Thanks for posting this! It’s a nice reminder to support some of the organizations who’s products I enjoy.
Currently I only donate to give directly
So every year I go donate Blood, since I’m Bloodtype 0. Aside froom that there are these:
- KDE
- FDroid
- Tutanota (Yes you can donate)
- Yet Zio (yet-calc App)
- My favourite Artist in Music
- A political Party which stands for Privacy
- EFF
- Tor
Internet Archive Duplicati (FOSS backup software)
- various other small open source projects
Eden Reforestation Project
Local all children’s hospital and khan academy
I’m a tech guy but also vegan and hate that I probably don’t do much for animals so:
- Direct Action Everywhere
- Sea Shepherd
I like them because both kind of kick ass at what they do.
I’d like to donate to the Humane Society but the local one is drowning in cash so I’d rather find one somewhere in the sticks (my hometown?) and donate to them.
