Electronic Frontier Foundation Survives on $5M/year
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Unfortunately the tech community is much less aware of their existence. Public Knowledge are the folks who work day to day in DC lobbying for tech policy. While EFF lead efforts around activism and the legal side, they decided years ago that they wouldn't be involved in the DC side of things. And while being uncompromising is a great ethical position to take, actually making things happen on the ground is crucial.
I spent the last week taking meetings with staffers in DC around §1201 reform for my project, FixtheDMCA.org, and PK set up a dozen meetings with judiciary committee staffers with a weeks notice. They're well-respected in DC, and were critical behind the scenes in organizing the anti-SOPA/PIPA campaign.
Take a minute, read about them, and donate now:
There are roughly 8 million people employed in science and technology in the U.S. Imagine if we each donated just $5 a month. While that's completely unrealistic to expect, what if we could average $1 a month for each of those workers?
Why would a biotech scientist working at a pharmaceutical firm be above-average interested in sponsoring an organisation that's all about software patents and the likes?
It's nearly completely unrelated.
I know this is and HN, and HN is about Silicon Valley, where "technology" equals "software", but really, the world is bigger than that.
I drew my approximation from government data sources. Where have you gotten your idea that "most" are not interested in what the EFF does? Further, where, if at all, are you getting numbers to justify your quantitative approximation that most are not in technology? (Also, side note – the EFF deals with much more than software, despite your implications)
Speaking as someone with a educational and professional background in research psychology, I can honestly say my experience would say you're wrong. As a generalization, I found scientists to care a about free speech, IP laws, fair use and DRM, laws having to do with governmental oversight/intrusion to research. The EFF may not be the first place they'd go, but it's not far off, ideologically.
Leanpub makes it very easy to set up such donations, if you are an author, consider doing so. You owe it to the free internet that you have such an opportunity in the first place. At least that is my reasoning.
2) It's a disgrace that they get so few donations. If that is our investment in our digital future, it's no wonder that it's all going downhill... If you are an entrepreneur or developer, you should seriously consider making healthy, recurring donations.
If a mod sees this, please fix.
We have kickstarter campaigns that bring in more than this. I regularly contribute to the EFF and my employer matches that donation (yay Red Hat) so I'm going to double my normal donation this year.
Nice vertical javascript timeline on Surveillance.
Id be very interested to see a compiled / aggregated list of sentencing for hacker and whistle-blower related prosecutions... I think we'd see a sadly consistent picture, which would help get the word out to non-geeks.
The NRA has 5 million voters with membership cards and it throws their political weight around at the drop of a hat. As a result, nobody fucks with the NRA, even seasoned politicians in stable left-wing postures compromise left and right so it won't smear them as anti-gun. When pressed, the NRA can even defeat things like universal background checks that are supported by 90% of the country.
A 12-month 'Silicon' membership with the EFF costs $25; Maybe they can't sustain & expand legal operations on this, but they can certainly incrementally add to the political power of their lobbying and amicus briefs just by having the member.
it was a good idea, and we did it once, i think, before forgetting. then a few years passed, we remembered, and did it once again. and then a few more years passed and we felt bad and got our acts together...
so now paulina regularly gives to some foundation here in chile that looks after old people, and i give to the EFF (it took me some time to decide, and i am not convinced it's the most deserving thing out there, but it does reflect me and my priorities, and in the end i decided that was what was important - other people might care more about children, or puppies, but what i want is to get the underlying freedoms straight).
anyway, i'm not boasting. i just suspect other people have thought the same, and, like us, simply not got round to it for a long time. so i thought i'd try give such people a little nudge ;o)
(also, they have cool pin badges and a really ugly t-shirt)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithe
And I'd consider putting 10% of my income towards social good a much better goal. It's not one that I always hit, but I think almost all of us could stand to carve this portion of our income out of our budgets, especially when it can so greatly benefit the causes we really care for. EFF is certainly one of mine.
In Canada, I also give 10$/m to Open Media who fights for online rights and against the telecom monopoly. If you're Canadian, you should check them out:
They did plenty of very effective things in the recent years, like pushing back the Usage-Based-Billing big-telco were trying to bring, which would have killed resellers that have better offerings.
In my home country, I do regular donations to charities by setting up an automated transfer in my bank, hence "pushing" the money. I prefer having nothing "pulled", even by such privacy oriented a group as the EFF. Is there any solution to this problem internationally? A monthly e-mail linking to a payment page (using VISA, for example) would count as a crude but satisfactory solution!
Hey, EFF, if you ever read this: An option for being sent an email monthly with a link to a one-click payment of the same amount as last month would get people like me donating!
I don't think that's too much though. It's not just a tool to donate, they provide the infrastructure for an alternative model to earning a living online. Their approach replaces the incentive to create artificial scarcity by an incentive to share. I would love to live in a society that worked like this.
Try to put some credit on a flattr account and donate to a few projects you like, I think you will get a better feel of what I meant. : )
Compared to what? Surely the competition?
For micropayments they're cheap.
I'm actually surprised at why some people here in HN think negatively of EFF. I'm very happy to hand over money to EFF each year. My employer allows us to pick charitable organizations to donate to from our paycheck, and EFF gets the biggest slice of the amount I allocate.
For example, for a large-but-imaginable donation of ~$2500 you can fund their entire operation for an hour — and that's assuming 2000 business hours in a year (the cost per hour is a lot less if you amortize over evenings and weekends :)).
The point is that these people have made their fortunes using the internet, and probably in no small part the freedoms that exist(ed). Its is not that they are rich, is system on which they got rich. I think many people would feel that such people should donate as a sort of pay back, paying one's dues. The rich part of the point simple suggests that a decent donation would be small fry to such people, and cause them no pain. $5 to some people could be a significant hit to the pocket.
Edit: Been in garden, letting the subconscious flow, and it suddenly occurred to me that donations from the likes of google and facebook would be a problem. Eventually EFF would be accused of being in google's pocket and all hell would break loose.
Begs the question: how can the likes of google donate to the likes of the EFF with out there being the suspicion of a conflict of interest?
The widow's mite is, in the end, still just a mite.