Should my money go to Wikipedia?
October 28, 2012 9:14 AM Subscribe
I'd like to donate some money to a charity. Is there a worthier techno-cause than Wikipedia?
If you're looking for a technology-related organization, I think the Electronic Freedom Foundation does good work.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 9:19 AM on October 28, 2012 [21 favorites]
posted by Salvor Hardin at 9:19 AM on October 28, 2012 [21 favorites]
I've always felt that the Electronic Frontier Foundation is a very worthy cause. How to Help.
posted by erst at 9:21 AM on October 28, 2012 [8 favorites]
posted by erst at 9:21 AM on October 28, 2012 [8 favorites]
Yes. I think of the EFF as the ACLU of the Internet. They fight the good fight, over and over, and are on the very short list of organisations to whom we give reliably every year (though some years more than others!)
posted by DarlingBri at 9:21 AM on October 28, 2012 [4 favorites]
posted by DarlingBri at 9:21 AM on October 28, 2012 [4 favorites]
Whoops, make that Electronic Frontier Foundation. Always make that mistake.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 9:26 AM on October 28, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by Salvor Hardin at 9:26 AM on October 28, 2012 [1 favorite]
EFF or CPJ, whose remit has broadened to cover bloggers and social media users who operate at tremendous personal risk.
posted by holgate at 9:30 AM on October 28, 2012
posted by holgate at 9:30 AM on October 28, 2012
Response by poster: I really like the EFF idea, and it seems that MeFi likes it a lot too. Thanks so much for the input everyone! I'm heading off to subscribe right after I post this!
posted by zscore at 9:44 AM on October 28, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by zscore at 9:44 AM on October 28, 2012 [1 favorite]
I have been a frequent contributor to EFF and I think their work is worthwhile. Just so you know, they will deluge you with an astonishing amount of paper mail if you give them a postal address where they can contact you. It took a while for me to get them to stop doing this, so you might want to build that in to your arrangement with them up front. I'm also a big fan of EPIC, the electronic privacy information center.
posted by jessamyn at 10:56 AM on October 28, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by jessamyn at 10:56 AM on October 28, 2012 [1 favorite]
N'thing EFF. One of the ONLY charities to which I have ever given money (rather than time).
posted by pla at 11:49 AM on October 28, 2012
posted by pla at 11:49 AM on October 28, 2012
"Common Crawl" is a non-profit foundation who are building and maintaining an open crawl of the web for the purposes of "innovation, education and research"
I have donated to "Common Crawl" because I think the information held in the web is too important to have solely in the hands of private corporations and because I believe it will provide a platform for new private enterprises to start in a field which has high barriers to entry.
http://commoncrawl.org/our-work/donate/
Vim (vim.org) is powerful text editor used by many programmers working in open-source software. It's distributed freely but the developer requests donations to help an orphanage in Uganda (see "Vim's License" for details and how to donate).
I use Vim daily and I have donated. It's not a direct "technology" contribution but contributions motivate the author of Vim and so a donation supports both the development of an important Programming Editor and the less fortunate children of Uganda.
posted by southof40 at 1:46 PM on October 28, 2012
I have donated to "Common Crawl" because I think the information held in the web is too important to have solely in the hands of private corporations and because I believe it will provide a platform for new private enterprises to start in a field which has high barriers to entry.
http://commoncrawl.org/our-work/donate/
Vim (vim.org) is powerful text editor used by many programmers working in open-source software. It's distributed freely but the developer requests donations to help an orphanage in Uganda (see "Vim's License" for details and how to donate).
I use Vim daily and I have donated. It's not a direct "technology" contribution but contributions motivate the author of Vim and so a donation supports both the development of an important Programming Editor and the less fortunate children of Uganda.
posted by southof40 at 1:46 PM on October 28, 2012
The Free Software Foundation might be one to consider if your techy impulses go in that direction.
posted by cthuljew at 1:46 AM on October 29, 2012
posted by cthuljew at 1:46 AM on October 29, 2012
The EFF is indeed a fine organisation, but if you're looking for additional avenues, you might like to consider the authors of free or libre software that you use. This particularly applies to smaller or less-glamorous projects, which are often overlooked in the rush to donate to big names like Mozilla.
posted by Busy Old Fool at 5:28 AM on October 29, 2012
posted by Busy Old Fool at 5:28 AM on October 29, 2012
All of these charities are worthy, but their good work may be moot if we get hit by a large enough asteroid. Fortunately the b612 foundation is trying to prevent that from happening.
from the site: B612 Sentinel aims to build, launch, and operate the world’s first privately funded deep space telescope to create the first comprehensive dynamic map of our inner solar system, identifying the current and future locations and trajectories of Earth crossing asteroids. To date, only about one percent of the nearly 1 million asteroids that could potentially hit Earth with devastating consequences have been observed and tracked. In just the first few weeks of operation, Sentinel will surpass this total, and during the first five years of operation, will discover 50 times more near-Earth asteroids than have been found by all other telescopes throughout history combined. Ball Aerospace will design and build the Sentinel Space Telescope, with the same expert team that built the Spitzer and Kepler Space Telescopes. Sentinel will launch in 2017-2018. Through a Space Act Agreement with NASA, data will be collected and sent back to Earth via NASA’s Deep Space Network, which also will be used for tracking and navigation.
posted by anon4now at 5:42 AM on October 29, 2012
from the site: B612 Sentinel aims to build, launch, and operate the world’s first privately funded deep space telescope to create the first comprehensive dynamic map of our inner solar system, identifying the current and future locations and trajectories of Earth crossing asteroids. To date, only about one percent of the nearly 1 million asteroids that could potentially hit Earth with devastating consequences have been observed and tracked. In just the first few weeks of operation, Sentinel will surpass this total, and during the first five years of operation, will discover 50 times more near-Earth asteroids than have been found by all other telescopes throughout history combined. Ball Aerospace will design and build the Sentinel Space Telescope, with the same expert team that built the Spitzer and Kepler Space Telescopes. Sentinel will launch in 2017-2018. Through a Space Act Agreement with NASA, data will be collected and sent back to Earth via NASA’s Deep Space Network, which also will be used for tracking and navigation.
posted by anon4now at 5:42 AM on October 29, 2012
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posted by yclipse at 9:16 AM on October 28, 2012