[tor-project] November Fundraising Report

[Sarah Stevenson]

Hello! Here is what the Fundraising Team was up to in November. As always, let us know if you have any questions or suggestions. We hope everyone enjoys the holidays.

## EOY Campaign
As of yesterday (12/9/19) we have officially raised more money this campaign than we did in the entirety of last year’s campaign! We are on track to earn close to $100,000 more than we did last year.[1]

On November 5th, the Browser team launched the campaign content on the about:tor page. This content has been a significant driver to the donate page. Desktop has generated 68,600 hits while Android has generated 218,000! Since TBA was so new last year, we did not have any campaign content beyond a mention on the Google Play Store. It seems like inclusion this year could be a major contributor to the increase in income. After English the localized about:tor content getting the most clicks is Russian.

In November we sent two emails out to our whole list. The first was a version of Isa’s vision blog[2] and the second was a round up of other ways people can support Tor.[3]

## Major Donors
Near the end of the month we sent a postal letter appeal to major donors and people in the database who don’t have an email address listed. This went out to around 400 donors and we are already seeing some nice returns. Many thanks to Al and Jon who probably got several paper cuts getting this out the door.

## Monthly Donors
Our Defenders of Privacy monthly giving program continues to grow. In November we raised $7,253 from 645 donors. This is an increase of 127 donors over October.

## Cryptocurrency
In November we raised over $20,000 from cryptocurrency donations. We added the ability for people to make a payment over the Lightning Network and use BottlePay.[4] We saw some nice engagement on social media when the news came out.

## Grants
OTF: We submitted a first round of Tor Browser proposal revisions to OTF on 11/24.

EEJF: We submitted a grant application to the Ethics & Excellence in Journalism Foundation to support privacy and digital security training for journalists in three U.S. regions centered around Atlanta, NYC, and San Jose. This proposal was declined on 11/25.

Unknown Fund: We submitted an informal application to the Unknown Fund, an “anonymous organisation that intends to invest and donate $75 million in bitcoin to startups [and nonprofits] which directly or indirectly support the idea of anonymity.”[5]

MOSS: We are finalizing changes to a proposal for Metrics + scaling Tor which will be submitted by the end of the year.

Zcash Foundation: We’re working on forming a proposal that we will submit by the end of the year.

National Endowment for Democracy: We are working on forming a project with a potential partner for the 1/10 deadline.

Guerilla Foundation: We’ve started initial conversations about whether or not the Tor Project would be a good fit and have a meeting scheduled 12/19.

Coming soon:
NSF Dark Decoys project, due ?? (rolling)
Comcast Innovation Fund, due ?? (rolling)
The Nathan Cummings Foundation, due ?? (rolling)
Schox Philanthropy, due ?? (rolling)
Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, LOI due ?? (rolling)
National Endowment for Democracy, due 1/10/2020

If you have any ideas, connections, or concerns about upcoming grant opportunities and the foundations on this list, please feel free to reach out directly or to grants at torproject.org <mailto:grants at torproject.org>.

[1] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/FundraisingTeam/Campaigns/2018 <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/FundraisingTeam/Campaigns/2018>
[2] https://blog.torproject.org/better-internet-possible-ive-seen-it <https://blog.torproject.org/better-internet-possible-ive-seen-it>
[3] https://blog.torproject.org/there-are-many-ways-help-tor-take-back-internet <https://blog.torproject.org/there-are-many-ways-help-tor-take-back-internet>
[4] https://cointelegraph.com/news/tor-project-now-accepts-bitcoin-over-lightning-network <https://cointelegraph.com/news/tor-project-now-accepts-bitcoin-over-lightning-network>
[5] https://www.unknown.fund <https://www.unknown.fund/>

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