Due to financial problems, throughout my privacy journey I have only used free tools to enhance my privacy. I was recently thinking about the question: If I had the money to give back to the services I’ve used, which ones would I donate to? Here is my personal list, which is still a WIP:

I will definitely donate to (13):

• Aegis Authenticator | Donation Link
• GrapheneOS | Donation Link
• KeePassXC | Donation Link
• The Linux Foundation | Donation Link
• LUKS | Donation Link (Help me find!)
• Mullvad | Donation Link (Help me find!)
• The Qubes OS Project | Donation Link
• SimpleX | Donation Link
• SearXNG | Donation Link (Help me find!)
• Tails | Donation Link
• Tor Project | Donation Link
• uBlock Origin | See here
• Whonix | Donation Link

I am very likely to donate to (11):

• Briar | Donation Link
• coreboot | Donation Link
• Electronic Frontier Foundation | Donation Link
• F-Droid | Donation Link
• The Gnu Privacy Guard | See here
• Libreboot | Donation Link
• LibreOffice | Donation Link
• NewPipe | Donation Link
• OpenStreetMap | Donation Link
• OpenPGP | Donation Link (Help me find!)
• Orbot | Donation Link

I will most likely donate to (7):

• AnonAddy/addy.io | Donation Link
• GtkHash | Donation Link (Help me find!)
• Joplin | Donation Link
• Lemmy | Donation Link
• LibreWolf | See here
• Monero | Donation Link (Help me find!)
• Nitrokey | Donation Link (Help me find!)

I may donate to (11):

• DuckDuckGo | See here
• Fedora | See here
• GitLab | donations@gitlab.com
• GNOME | Donation Link
• Molly | Donation Link
• NextDNS | Donation Link (Help me find!)
• Organic Maps | Donation Link
• privacy.sexy | Donation Link
• Proton | Donation Link (Help me find!)
• Signal | Donation Link
• Standard Notes | Donation Link (Help me find!)

I may add more as I think of them. Please leave your ideas!

Note: I’m trying my best to avoid turning this into just a list of privacy tools, but that may end up being what it becomes.

Honorable Mentions (10):

There are some services that I support but either don’t use or have not matured enough to donate to.

• 2FAS | Donation Link
• AdGuard | Donation Link (Help me find!)
• Free Software Foundation | Donation Link
• Mozilla (Firefox) | Donation Link
• GNU Image Manipulation Program | Donation Link
• Invidious | Donation Link
• OsmAnd | Donation Link (Help me find!)
• Piped | Donation Link
• Spotube | Developer Donation Link
• Wine | Donation Link

Some math

I realized I never actually specified any amounts that I would donate to each service, so here is most likely how I will spread my money:

For the services I will definitely donate to, I will donate $50 to each services.

For the services I am very likely to donate to, I will donate $40 to each service.

For the services I will most likely donate to, I will donate $30 to each service, for the ones I decide to donate to.

For the services I may donate to, I will donate $20 to each service, for the ones I decide to donate to.

For the honorable mentions, if they ever become part of my official donation list, I will start with a $10 donation and increase it from there.

For those thinking those are small donations, note that if I were to donate those amounts to every service it would be a total donation of over $1,600. That is at least a start, and once I am able to donate I will likely donate the same amount every year.

By no means am I doing this for publicity or congratulations, I am just making my thoughts public and hopefully sparking others to donate to some privacy services. Lots of these services run off of donations, so please try not to take them for granted!