If you found this encouraging, remember that donating to the EFF is a nice way to show appreciation. You can also set them up to benefit from amazon.smile if that strikes your fancy.
I would highly, highly recommend that you sign up for a recurring monthly donation of $10 or more. It's the cost of Netflix, but infinitely more valuable.
If you shop with Amazon.com, you can use the subdomain,
smile.amazon.com
to donate to your favorite charity, of which EFF is a part! So, if you'd like to 'passively' donate to the EFF, you can change your smile.amazon.com settings (and ensure you shop/checkout w/ the Smile subdomain) and a portion of your purchase will go to the EFF.
There are many organizations and charities that are a part of the Smile program, so choose whichever you'd like to support.
Showing appreciation is a minor detail (sorry to take your wording so literally; I'm just using it to make a point). This is essential work for everyone and for our democracy. Donating to and supporting the EFF (or similar organizations, if you don't happen to agree with the EFF) is a responsibility; it's doing (part of) your share.
The greatest problem in our (and every) democracy is not those who actively oppose progress, but the great majority who sit around and do nothing.
(The upside to that is, if you do get off your ass, then you have greatly disproportionate power over your community and nation. An organized, active minority can be very powerful -- look at the Tea Party, which I think only 10% of American support but which, by being very active and by being almost 50% of GOP primary voters, has great influence over the entire nation.)
The EFF's positions on both net neutrality and CISPA have been intentionally misleading, and until they correct their stance I will not consider it my "responsibility" to support them.
For example, the EFF claims that cyber intelligence is user data, when in reality it's IPs, domains, md5s, general behavior of threat actors. The EFF intentionally pretends like companies want to give away user information, when in reality, companies want to enable the US government to protect its citizens.
I'll alternate between my current choice on amazon.smile, and EFF, besides the direct contributions.