Hello Tor world. Here is the Fundraising team’s report for August. As always, let us know if you have any questions.
## Events We ran our first booth at DEF CON in August. It was an exhausting few days, but we exceeded our goal and raised over $43,000! We also made several connections with folks who want to help us with projects in the coming months. We have compiled lessons learned and are looking forward to attending again next year.
## Appeals The Bug Smash campaign[1] ran from August 1 to August 31. We raised a little over $86K across postal mail, social media, email appeal, and in-person gifts at DEF CON and CCCamp. We received a mixture of currencies, including a variety of cryptocurrencies. This a strong increase over August 2018 when we raised $13K.
## Grants We submitted a grant to RIPE NCC Community Project’s support program for 50,000 EUR to improve our IPv6 support. Thanks to teor, Nick, & Gaba for their help writing this proposal.
We submitted a concept note to OTF for a large Tor Browser project which would move us away from the ESR cycle and onto Mozilla’s regular release cycle; it would also allow us to implement some of Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection features. Thanks to the Browser team and Pili for making this happen!
We found out that two of our grant requests were declined, one to NLnet for ESR migration and the other to the Deer Creek Foundation for Communications work.
Upcoming grant requests: DRL SOIs for Community and Scalability, due 9/20 MOSS Scalability project, due 9/?? (rolling) NLnet, due 10/1 Herb Block Foundation, due 10/3 NSF Dark Decoys project, due ?? (rolling)
## Cryptocurrency We made a connection with a company called The Giving Block[2] that helps nonprofits accept cryptocurrency donations called. We are now listed on their website and will participate in their Giving Tuesday efforts this coming December. We are also discussing other ways to collaborate.
## Monthly Donors We continue to see growth in our monthly donor program, Defenders of Privacy. In August we received $5,386.75 from this group. As you can see in the chart below, our efforts to recognize and communicate with these donors has resulted in more stable income and less attrition. We should expect the group to continue to grow through the end of the year and then have a dip again in January when people tend to reassess their monthly commitments.
[1] https://blog.torproject.org/tors-bug-smash-fund-help-tor-smash-all-bugs https://blog.torproject.org/tors-bug-smash-fund-help-tor-smash-all-bugs [2] https://www.thegivingblock.com/donate-bitcoin https://www.thegivingblock.com/donate-bitcoin
Hi all,
Attached is the chart I referenced. Or you can view it here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15q2jCE4_USbM-vH0PBZoBJjdX96uo9H8845Rl21a... https://docs.google.com/document/d/15q2jCE4_USbM-vH0PBZoBJjdX96uo9H8845Rl21a5V8/edit?usp=sharing
Happy weekend, Sarah
Sarah Stevenson Fundraising Director The Tor Project sstevenson@torproject.org
Public Key: 93B3 AC08 4257 FA3D D4BB 8E95 CC08 5DBA C015 612A
On Sep 13, 2019, at 1:34 PM, Sarah Stevenson sstevenson@torproject.org wrote:
Hello Tor world. Here is the Fundraising team’s report for August. As always, let us know if you have any questions.
## Events We ran our first booth at DEF CON in August. It was an exhausting few days, but we exceeded our goal and raised over $43,000! We also made several connections with folks who want to help us with projects in the coming months. We have compiled lessons learned and are looking forward to attending again next year.
## Appeals The Bug Smash campaign[1] ran from August 1 to August 31. We raised a little over $86K across postal mail, social media, email appeal, and in-person gifts at DEF CON and CCCamp. We received a mixture of currencies, including a variety of cryptocurrencies. This a strong increase over August 2018 when we raised $13K.
## Grants We submitted a grant to RIPE NCC Community Project’s support program for 50,000 EUR to improve our IPv6 support. Thanks to teor, Nick, & Gaba for their help writing this proposal.
We submitted a concept note to OTF for a large Tor Browser project which would move us away from the ESR cycle and onto Mozilla’s regular release cycle; it would also allow us to implement some of Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection features. Thanks to the Browser team and Pili for making this happen!
We found out that two of our grant requests were declined, one to NLnet for ESR migration and the other to the Deer Creek Foundation for Communications work.
Upcoming grant requests: DRL SOIs for Community and Scalability, due 9/20 MOSS Scalability project, due 9/?? (rolling) NLnet, due 10/1 Herb Block Foundation, due 10/3 NSF Dark Decoys project, due ?? (rolling)
## Cryptocurrency We made a connection with a company called The Giving Block[2] that helps nonprofits accept cryptocurrency donations called. We are now listed on their website and will participate in their Giving Tuesday efforts this coming December. We are also discussing other ways to collaborate.
## Monthly Donors We continue to see growth in our monthly donor program, Defenders of Privacy. In August we received $5,386.75 from this group. As you can see in the chart below, our efforts to recognize and communicate with these donors has resulted in more stable income and less attrition. We should expect the group to continue to grow through the end of the year and then have a dip again in January when people tend to reassess their monthly commitments.
[1] https://blog.torproject.org/tors-bug-smash-fund-help-tor-smash-all-bugs https://blog.torproject.org/tors-bug-smash-fund-help-tor-smash-all-bugs [2] https://www.thegivingblock.com/donate-bitcoin https://www.thegivingblock.com/donate-bitcoin
Hello from the Fundraising Team! Here is what we were up to in September.
## Individual Giving
We wanted to take this opportunity to talk about some ongoing efforts to solicit and retain individual donors. Over the past year we have honed our strategy to move contacts up the so-called engagement ladder. We are promoting our newsletter on the about:tor page and now have 13 times the number of subscriptions we had at this time last year (over 130k subscriptions). We are sending each of these subscribers a welcome email within a few days of joining and then offer them a discounted sticker pack about a month later. This strategy has successfully converted over 1,300 people from subscriber to donor.
About three months after someone makes their initial donation, they are asked to become a monthly donor or a Defender of Privacy, the name we gave to our monthly donors program. Since we started to roll out our monthly donors strategy we have seen a 90% increase in monthly income from this group as compared to this time last year.
## Cryptocurrency
In September Keybase airdropped the first installment of Stellar Lumen coins on their users.[1] Their plan is to give away 2 billion Lumen over the next 20 months. Many bitcoin enthusiasts want to see altcoins removed from the market and have encouraged others to donate their Lumen to nonprofits like Tor.[2] So far we have received $1,500 worth of coins. There are very few nonprofits that currently accept Stellar Lumen[3], so we should continue to see donations as the airdrops continue. You can sign up to be a Keybase user and receive and donate the approximately $20 each month to Tor yourself!
We also launched a BTCPayServer widget on our cryptocurrency page.[4] This is something our donors have been asking us to do for years because it is open-source, private and censorship resistant. BTCPayServer[5] made it easy for us by hosting our server and assisting with the set up. This is in addition to the campaign they ran for us over the summer.
Tor is now signed up as a recipient of Brave Rewards.[6] This is a system where Brave users can ‘tip’ a token to websites, twitter accounts, or youtube accounts. The tokens can be converted to USD and so far we have earned a bit over $300. If you want to contribute, you can use Brave, join Brave Rewards, and tip Tor on a monthly or one-time basis.
## Major Donors
We launched our major donor page [7] and began inviting past donors to become Champions of Privacy. This is a group of donors who give $1,000 or more per year and who receive special recognition and perks for their generosity.
Isa met with two current major donors to thank them for their support and begin to build a closer relationship with them. Our goal is to have her build these types of visits into all of her travel.
## Grants
Herb Block Foundation: We submitted an LOI to the Herb Block Foundation under their Defending Basic Freedoms category for general operating funds in the amount of $15,000. We will hear more about their decision--and whether or not we will be invited for a full proposal--in early November.
DRL: We submitted two SOIs to DRL under their open call. One project to improve network scalability and one user feedback collection project (similar to our work w/ Sponsor 9) with Tails & Guardian Project as subgrantees. We will likely hear about DRL’s decisions by the end of the year.
MOSS: We developed & wrote a request to MOSS for a Metrics project that will help set us up for network scalability experimentation & development. It is not yet submitted but will be soon.
NLnet: We submitted a request for NLnet to help support the MOSS scalability project.
Coming soon: OTF Tor Browser full proposal, due 10/15 NSF Dark Decoys project, due ?? (rolling)
[1] https://keybase.io/a/i/r/d/r/o/p/spacedrop2019 https://keybase.io/a/i/r/d/r/o/p/spacedrop2019 [2] https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-owners-are-giving-away-altcoins-to-su... https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-owners-are-giving-away-altcoins-to-support-tor-project [3] https://www.thegivingblock.com/post/donate-stellar-lumens-xlm-and-support-no... https://www.thegivingblock.com/post/donate-stellar-lumens-xlm-and-support-nonprofits-during-the-big-stellar-space-drop [4] https://donate.torproject.org/cryptocurrency https://donate.torproject.org/cryptocurrency [5] https://btcpayserver.org/ https://btcpayserver.org/ [6] https://brave.com/brave-rewards/ https://brave.com/brave-rewards/ [7] https://donate.torproject.org/champions-of-privacy https://donate.torproject.org/champions-of-privacy
Hello! Here is what the Fundraising Team was up to in October. As always, let us know if you have any questions or suggestions!
## Grants OTF: Our concept note submitted to OTF in September was accepted for a full proposal, which we submitted 10/15. This proposal covers the work to migrate Tor Browser from the ESR cycle to Firefox’s regular release cycle as well as implementing some ETP features in Tor Browser. OTF responded with questions and comments, and we are now working on a review of this full proposal, due 11/24.
Guerilla Foundation: We’ve started initial conversations about whether or not the Tor Project would be a good fit and have a meeting scheduled 12/12.
We’re continuing to build/re-engage relationships with large foundations: Sloan, Ford, Open Society, and Knight.
We had two proposals declined by the Glaser Progress Foundation and the Herb Block Foundation.
Coming soon: NSF Dark Decoys project, due ?? (rolling) Comcast Innovation Fund, due ?? (rolling) The Nathan Cummings Foundation, due ?? (rolling) Schox Philanthropy, due ?? (rolling) Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, LOI due ?? (rolling) Ethics & Excellence in Journalism, LOI due 11/15 OTF proposal review, due 11/24 UN Democracy Fund, LOI due 12/15 National Endowment for Democracy, due 1/10/2020 [tbd]
If you have any ideas, connections, or concerns about upcoming grant opportunities and the foundations on this list, please feel free to reach out directly or to grants@torproject.org.
## EOY Campaign We launched the campaign, ‘Take back the internet with Tor,’ October 28th. Our first blog post laid out the theme of the campaign. [1] We sent an email to our list (137,849) names. This year we segmented this list and asked people for a specific contribution based on their past giving. This takes more time, but it resulted in many people upgrading.
As of this writing (11/18/19), we are seeing great engagement with the campaign. Our daily contributions through the website are up on average to $3,634 per day when the average was $1,932 in the first 20 days of the 2018 campaign. We’ve also had 128 people sign up to be monthly donors when we had 100 new monthly donors in the entire 2018 campaign.
We’ve moved our gift fulfillment to a mailhouse so Jon will not be burdened with sending out all of the shirt and sticker requests.
## Major Donors We held a major donor reception in Boston at Wendy Seltzer’s home on October 28th. We had a handful of guests who appreciated remarks from Isa and Nick. All attendees received a packet of material about Tor as well as an ask to become a major donor. This was a good learning experience for us. For future events we need to ensure we have a bigger invite list so that we have more people in attendance. We are in the process of planning a bigger event in San Francisco in March.
## Cryptocurrency The Giving Block got us set up with Brave AdGrants.[2] We have seen good engagement through these ads resulting in Brave BAT tips as well as people making donations through our website. We have also seen good engagement on Twitter with folks connected to Brave.[3]
We attempted to secure an EOY cryptocurrency match from Kraken, but it did not come through this year. We will continue to engage in hopes of having support from them next year.
Cryptocurrency gifts continue to come in steadily. We are hoping the value of bitcoin increases through the end of the year, which should result in increased contributions.
[1] https://blog.torproject.org/take-back-internet-us https://blog.torproject.org/take-back-internet-us [2] https://www.thegivingblock.com/post/in-partnership-with-the-giving-block-bra... https://www.thegivingblock.com/post/in-partnership-with-the-giving-block-brave-selects-the-tor-project-as-the-latest-grant-recipient-of [3] https://twitter.com/brave/status/1191821841339318272 https://twitter.com/brave/status/1191821841339318272
Hello! Here is what the Fundraising Team was up to in November. As always, let us know if you have any questions or suggestions. We hope everyone enjoys the holidays.
## EOY Campaign As of yesterday (12/9/19) we have officially raised more money this campaign than we did in the entirety of last year’s campaign! We are on track to earn close to $100,000 more than we did last year.[1]
On November 5th, the Browser team launched the campaign content on the about:tor page. This content has been a significant driver to the donate page. Desktop has generated 68,600 hits while Android has generated 218,000! Since TBA was so new last year, we did not have any campaign content beyond a mention on the Google Play Store. It seems like inclusion this year could be a major contributor to the increase in income. After English the localized about:tor content getting the most clicks is Russian.
In November we sent two emails out to our whole list. The first was a version of Isa’s vision blog[2] and the second was a round up of other ways people can support Tor.[3]
## Major Donors Near the end of the month we sent a postal letter appeal to major donors and people in the database who don’t have an email address listed. This went out to around 400 donors and we are already seeing some nice returns. Many thanks to Al and Jon who probably got several paper cuts getting this out the door.
## Monthly Donors Our Defenders of Privacy monthly giving program continues to grow. In November we raised $7,253 from 645 donors. This is an increase of 127 donors over October.
## Cryptocurrency In November we raised over $20,000 from cryptocurrency donations. We added the ability for people to make a payment over the Lightning Network and use BottlePay.[4] We saw some nice engagement on social media when the news came out.
## Grants OTF: We submitted a first round of Tor Browser proposal revisions to OTF on 11/24.
EEJF: We submitted a grant application to the Ethics & Excellence in Journalism Foundation to support privacy and digital security training for journalists in three U.S. regions centered around Atlanta, NYC, and San Jose. This proposal was declined on 11/25.
Unknown Fund: We submitted an informal application to the Unknown Fund, an “anonymous organisation that intends to invest and donate $75 million in bitcoin to startups [and nonprofits] which directly or indirectly support the idea of anonymity.”[5]
MOSS: We are finalizing changes to a proposal for Metrics + scaling Tor which will be submitted by the end of the year.
Zcash Foundation: We’re working on forming a proposal that we will submit by the end of the year.
National Endowment for Democracy: We are working on forming a project with a potential partner for the 1/10 deadline.
Guerilla Foundation: We’ve started initial conversations about whether or not the Tor Project would be a good fit and have a meeting scheduled 12/19.
Coming soon: NSF Dark Decoys project, due ?? (rolling) Comcast Innovation Fund, due ?? (rolling) The Nathan Cummings Foundation, due ?? (rolling) Schox Philanthropy, due ?? (rolling) Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, LOI due ?? (rolling) National Endowment for Democracy, due 1/10/2020
If you have any ideas, connections, or concerns about upcoming grant opportunities and the foundations on this list, please feel free to reach out directly or to grants@torproject.org mailto:grants@torproject.org.
[1] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/FundraisingTeam/Camp... https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/FundraisingTeam/Campaigns/2018 [2] https://blog.torproject.org/better-internet-possible-ive-seen-it https://blog.torproject.org/better-internet-possible-ive-seen-it [3] https://blog.torproject.org/there-are-many-ways-help-tor-take-back-internet https://blog.torproject.org/there-are-many-ways-help-tor-take-back-internet [4] https://cointelegraph.com/news/tor-project-now-accepts-bitcoin-over-lightnin... https://cointelegraph.com/news/tor-project-now-accepts-bitcoin-over-lightning-network [5] https://www.unknown.fund https://www.unknown.fund/
Happy New Year from the Fundraising Team! Please reach out if you have any questions or comments about our December report.
## EOY Campaign We will send a more thorough message about the campaign in the next few days, but we are happy to report that we raised $304,045 during the campaign and $833,956 from individuals in 2019. We have raised more money from individuals in the first six months of this fiscal year than we did in FY19 in its entirety! We gained 4,757 new donors throughout the campaign, whereas in 2018, we gained 2,029 new donors. We also gained 330 new monthly donors, bringing our monthly income from these donors to around $8,000.
##GivingTuesday / #BitcoinTuesday On Giving Tuesday we published a blog written by Nick[1] and sent a fundraising email based off of that text. Giving Tuesday is really important in the fundraising world because it is a day where the global community focuses on philanthropy.
We also participated in the first #BitcoinTuesday spearheaded by The Giving Block[2]. They had corporate sponsors like Gemini match all cryptocurrency donations made through their platform that day. We had some success, but everyone agrees that the lower value of bitcoin in the last months of the year suppressed donations. Throughout the EOY campaign, we raised a total of $33,000 in cryptocurrency donations.
## Human Rights Day card We sent a greeting card celebrating Human Rights Day by postal mail[3] to major and monthly donors. This card had no ask: its intention was to acknowledge and thank our donors for their contributions.
## Grants RIPE NCC: Success! We were awarded a grant in the amount of €50,000 to work on the Tor network’s IPv6 support from Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) Community Project Fund. RIPE NCC is the regional Internet registry for Europe and West Asia. For more information about this project, and the other projects selected to ‘advance the good of the internet,’ visit: https://www.ripe.net/support/cpf/funding-recipients-2019 https://www.ripe.net/support/cpf/funding-recipients-2019. Thank you to teor for bringing the need for IPv6 funding to the grants team and for all who helped to write the proposal.
OTF: We received a second request for revisions from OTF for the Tor Browser project. Said revisions were submitted 1/2/2020.
Zcash Foundation: We have submitted a proposal to the Zcash Foundation to work on the Walking Onions protocol.
MOSS: We submitted a proposal for Metrics + scaling Tor. We expect to hear about the committee's decision around the end of February 2020.
Guerilla Foundation: We had a meeting scheduled for December that was rescheduled to January.
Schox Philanthropy: We submitted an application to be considered for $25K general operating funds.
We are meeting with larger foundations in the new year.
Coming soon: NSF Dark Decoys project, due ?? (rolling) Comcast Innovation Fund, due ?? (rolling) The Nathan Cummings Foundation, due ?? (rolling) Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, LOI due ?? (rolling)
[1] https://blog.torproject.org/giving-tuesday-support-tech-freedom-and-human-ri... https://blog.torproject.org/giving-tuesday-support-tech-freedom-and-human-rights [2] https://www.thegivingblock.com/post/rainn-wilson-bitcoin-and-nonprofits-why-... https://www.thegivingblock.com/post/rainn-wilson-bitcoin-and-nonprofits-why-bitcointuesday-s-cryptocurrency-fundraiser-worked [3] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HcpwwE22duTlAljg3952MKfzEt93T3WsJF-d0l75... https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HcpwwE22duTlAljg3952MKfzEt93T3WsJF-d0l75IV0/edit?usp=sharing
tor-project@lists.torproject.org
-
Sarah Stevenson