

Electronic Frontier Foundation Survives on $5M/year - mapt
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=7576

======
sinak
While I love, love, love the EFF, I'd also really like to point out that
Public Knowledge are another, lesser known non-profit fighting for your rights
and doing incredible work.

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:

[http://www.publicknowledge.org](http://www.publicknowledge.org)

~~~
notJim
You should write about your experience with this organization, and submit it
separately. It might be a good way to get the word out. This is the first I've
heard of them.

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slacka
EFF has been warning us about our government abusing our trust long before
this scandal broke. Imagine that EFF had the membership and money that the NRA
has. You can be sure our privacy rights would be much stronger now. There is
something you can do about it:

[https://supporters.eff.org/donate](https://supporters.eff.org/donate)

~~~
incongruity
This.

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?

~~~
skrebbel
Most people working "in science and technology" do work that's very marginally
related to what the EFF does.

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.

~~~
incongruity
Your own assumptions are problematic, IMHO.

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.

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pavelludiq
I've just set up for 10% of my royalties from
[https://leanpub.com/lispwebtales](https://leanpub.com/lispwebtales) to go to
the EFF. It's a very modest contribution(I made ~150$ this month from the
book, and expect slightly less next one) but I intend to increase the
percentage if sales go up.

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.

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lazyjones
1) it's "Electronic _Frontier_ Foundation"

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.

~~~
mapt
I plead lack of morning caffeine.

If a mod sees this, please fix.

------
bcl
How about we double this?

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.

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gridmaths
Thats pretty great bang-for-buck, they've got a lot of ongoing cases, and the
website has been pretty superb over the last 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.

~~~
slacka
Post about this topic on Facebook and G+ help to educate our circle of
friends. Even my nontechnical friends are upset to hear that Ge government has
acces to their data.

------
mapt
One of the more interesting points I heard David Brin make a while back was -
forget the quantity of money for a moment, these organizations also absorb
power through membership numbers.

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.

------
andrewcooke
many years ago both me and my partner decided we should donate 1% of our
earnings to some good cause (there seems to be a common 'meme' of giving one
percent of earnings - googling turns up a lot of different ideas).

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)

~~~
xbryanx
Yes, it's a very old meme.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithe](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.

~~~
llamataboot
I agree. I give anything I make that is over the median income level in the US
to charities or kickstarters, which is currently about 50% of my income. I
just made 1% of that EFF. Maybe this is not desirable for most hackernews
readers, but carving out a fixed percentage of your income is a good way to
fund projects you care about.

------
AYBABTME
Recurrent, 10$/m setup here. I'm a student so I can't afford to give more.

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:

[https://openmedia.ca/donate](https://openmedia.ca/donate)

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.

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wavefunction
They are fighting for all of us. If you can afford to, please donate (I did
last night).

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u2328
I try to give to software non-profits every paycheck. Even if it's only $5 or
$10, it's better to give than to think, "Oh, they are great and I want to give
them a big donation but I don't have the money right now, so I'll wait until I
have $50 to donate" and never get to it.

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giulivo
not sure how much familiar you are with EFF though, it is called electronic
FRONTIER foundation (not FREEDOM foundation)

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homeomorphic
I'd love to begin making small monthly payments to the EFF, but here's my
hurdle: I don't like authorizing anybody (not even the EFF) to charge my VISA
more than once. And I don't like having PayPal take a cut when the money's
going to a charity.

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!

~~~
jrockway
I'm sure if you have your bank mail them a check every month, they'll cash it.

~~~
homeomorphic
Haha, sometimes the US-European disconnect is very cute. I mean no offense,
but checks went out of use in my country like 20 years ago. (Anectodally, they
can still be cashed, for a service fee of $30 or so). Oh, and mailing
something to the US would alone be more than PayPal's cut.

~~~
jrockway
So your banking system has no way of giving money to an organization you want
to support, and you're calling us "very cute"? That makes a lot of sense.

~~~
homeomorphic
Oh, no, of course I can. Charities/businesses publish account numbers and I
push the money.

------
ericd
Please consider signing up for recurring donations, rather than one-time, so
they can better predict the amount of money they get, and also so you don't
donate and then forget to for a couple of years.

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llamataboot
Just got off my lazy butt and added a recurring donation equal to 1% of my
monthly income. Will you do the same?

~~~
mindcrime
I'm not crazy about recurring donations in general, but I did just donate a
$100.00 one-time donation to the EFF. I'll chip in more here and there as
circumstances dictate. I do feel guilty now about not giving before this. :-(

------
rayiner
I'm amazed it makes due with so little. But the level of donations also goes
to show you how little people care about its mission (which is unfortunate),
slacktivists on HN and Reddit aside.

------
hrabago
Every time I read about digital privacy issues, and there's a lot of them, I'm
always thankful that EFF exists and is there to fight these battles that I
can't and don't have the means to.

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.

------
waqf
The nice thing about donating to an org with a small budget (unlike, say, a
presidential campaign or your alma mater) is that you feel your contribution
makes a real difference to them.

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 :)).

------
nodata
The question nobody is asking: would more money help?

~~~
cvg
Good question. It appears that they're only spending $3.8 million a year. It'd
be great to see them up their program expenses to shrink that surplus.

------
argumentum
Wow, such an impactful NGO deserves a lot more. Just joined as a "gold" member
for a mere $100. For full disclosure, I will receive some schwag in return.

~~~
chill1
You can uncheck the box next to the gift options, so that you don't waste
their time/money on sending you a gift.

~~~
argumentum
I saw that option, but I figured wearing a t-shirt around would add greater
value for them.

------
onecommentonly
It's a disgrace. Not to pick on any particular person, considering that
Silicon Valley has dozens of billionaires and thousands of filthy rich people,
but Sean Parker got lucky with Facebook and spent like $12.5m in a wedding
(including a fine). It's their money and all, but can't these rich people also
write a $1 million check to an org as important as EFF ?

~~~
StavrosK
Can you write a $5 check to "an org as important as EFF", or are you just
complaining that rich people don't donate?

~~~
gwern
I certainly can write a check for $5 (and have donated more than that), but
the thing is, a $1m donation from a rich person does a _lot_ more than my $5 -
specifically, it does 200,000x more.

The widow's mite is, in the end, still just a mite.

~~~
StavrosK
Not if 200,000 people write it.

~~~
gwern
I doubt even 200,000 people have ever donated to the EFF over its entire
lifetime from 1990 to today.

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yekko
I would love to "survive" on 5 million a year.

