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)
Lemmy.zip and the NSPCC
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 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.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
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.
Good lord these numbers are ludicrous
Good find.
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.
I log all my donations so I have a list to copy-paste. Some of them I cannot donate to anymore (e.g.: Linux Mint) because they use PayPal which shadow-banned me. Perhaps because I kept using virtual single-use cards, and using like 50 different cards may look suspicious. But anyway, fuck PayPal.
So, the list with amounts removed (they’re too low):
Linux Mint
TeamSeas
Manjaro
OpenCollective tips
Tor Project
Internet Archive (archive.org)
The Document Foundation (LibreOffice)
Arch Linux
KDE
Mozilla
F-Droid
Termux
db0 Lemmy instance (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
Arne Schwabe (dev of Android OVPN client)
Deluan Quintao (dev of Navidrome server)
Arty Bishop (dev of Look4Sat)
sc07 (Fediverse Canvas creator)
IPcko
Markus Fisch (dev of Binary Eye)
VideoLAN
ochranma.sk
Meshtastic
Kiwix
Municia pre Ukrajinu
FFmpeg
IzzyOnDroid
LemmyThat is just a full list of every place I ever donated to. I couldn’t afford for them to be recurring.
Some of them you probably won’t know as they’re only relevant in my country (Slovakia). I’ll try to quickly describe them, I have a long day tomorrow and only 5 hours left to sleep (and it’s shortening).
IPcko - Mostly a suicide helpline, but they do a lot more too. Constantly underfunded and this year the government cut their budget even more. They provide help over phone, chat and e-mail, but also have teams that can go meet the person, physical offices (“Káčko”) across the country where you can speak to a therapist if you’re doing too bad (for free) and some more stuff like clubs where people can meet and (try to) have fun… I am too tired to name all, sorry.
ochranma.sk - Part of INHOPE network. Up until recently we had no way to report CSAM (this was started in 2022), and in 2018 and 2019 we had the second (to Netherlands) highest count of known occurrences of CSAM sharing, even surpassing USA and Russia. Mind you, we have a population of 5.5 million…
Municia pre Ukrajinu - “If not the government, then us” - Money to fund purchase of ammunition for Ukraine in cooperation with Czech Republic (our government refused to help Ukraine, thus the slogan)Edit: That info is from mind mind, I need sleep. May not be accurate.
I cannot afford much, but I gladly give monthly to Doctors Without Borders.
Got a recurring donation to our local Cat Rescue. It’s not much but it’s a start.
- Wikimedia Foundation
- Nature Conservancy
- Democracy Now
- Democratic Socialists of America local chapter
I have a monthly recurring donation to the GiveWell Top Charities fund. GiveWell ranks charities by efficiency (i.e. impact per dollar) and distributes the funds donations to the most effective ones. Those include fighting malaria, world hunger, child blindness,…
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.
I just sat down to do my annual donations, so I’ve got the list ready to go:
- local food bank
- local safe injection site
- Signal
- KDE
- OpenMedia (closest thing to EFF in Canada)
A few places I couldn’t afford to donate to this year, in case anyone needs more ideas:
- archive.org
- EFF
- miscellaneous software projects I’m using (mostly Steam Deck plugins because I’m in that community a lot)
- Gnome
I also give a bit to Tor and The Beaverton monthly.
I donate to my local animal shelter
I donate my time more than my money. Scouts and school fundraisers soak up way too many hours.
My biggest ongoing financial donation is the pile of money I put into Kiva years ago, which is slowly being depleted each time they take a cut as an administrative fee. I plan to let the balance wind down and not add more money in the future. Kiva doesn’t operate quite the way it is advertised, and from what I have read their C-suite is also overpaid.
I also donate a few dollars each month to a Lemmy mobile app.
I’ve been meaning to donate to KEXP radio in Seattle. I’ll go do that right now while I’m thinking about it.
- Local food bank
- Local humane society
- Local wildlife recovery sanctuary
- Doctors Without Borders (during AGDQ)
- Prevent Cancer (during SGDQ)
- Trans lifeline
- Signal
More of a regular thing for me than annual. It’s primarily Doctors without Borders and some international charities,mainly for the middle east. A while back my wife and I paid for some wells for some villages in Pakistan.
Money
- My local NPR station
- InRangeTV
Time
- Wikipedia
I don’t have a lot to give. If I did, I would also include:
- Linux Mint
- GIMP
- Darktable
- Inkscape
- Open Medicine Foundation
- Election Science
- LibreOffice
- zirk.us
- midwest.social
- Strong Towns
I like doing my donations on Giving Tuesday.
My list includes:
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Medito
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Signal
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Mozilla
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Wikipedia
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Khan Academy
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Lemmy instance
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Mastodon
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Local NPR station
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Local animal shelter
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ACLU
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Propublica
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SPLC
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Planned Parenthood
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