There are many causes worth supporting out there. It’s important that you help out organizations doing good in the world. Here is a list of causes I support or no longer support for various reasons:

Open Source Initiative

Website: Open Source Initiative

We are the stewards of the Open Source Definition (OSD) and the community-recognized body for reviewing and approving licenses as OSD-conformant.

Software Freedom Conservancy

Website: Software Freedom Conservancy

Software Freedom Conservancy is a not-for-profit charity that helps promote, improve, develop, and defend Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects. Conservancy provides a non-profit home and infrastructure for FLOSS projects. This allows FLOSS developers to focus on what they do best — writing and improving FLOSS for the general public — while Conservancy takes care of the projects’ needs that do not relate directly to software development and documentation.

Outreachy

Website: Outreachy

Outreachy internships are remote, paid ($6,000), and last three months. Outreachy supports diversity in free and open source software! Outreachy internships run from May to August and December to March. Applications open in January and August: https://www.outreachy.org/apply/

Wikimedia Foundation

Website: Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia and our other free knowledge projects. We want to make it easier for everyone to share what they know. To do this, we keep Wikipedia and Wikimedia sites fast, reliable, and available to all. We protect the values and policies that allow free knowledge to thrive. We build new features and tools to make it easy to read, edit, and share from the Wikimedia sites. Above all, we support the communities of volunteers around the world who edit, improve, and add knowledge across Wikimedia projects.

Internet Archive

Website: Internet Archive

Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.

This is also where I archive larger videos for various uses. I make sure I’m paying my fair share.

Previously Supported Charities (good ones)

National Center for Transgender Equality

Website: National Center for Transgender Equality

The National Center for Transgender Equality advocates to change policies and society to increase understanding and acceptance of transgender people. In the nation’s capital and throughout the country, NCTE works to replace disrespect, discrimination, and violence with empathy, opportunity, and justice.

/dev/color

Website: /dev/color

We believe the world is a better place when we get the most out of each individual. Software engineers are uniquely positioned to improve the world—one programmer can design products that change millions of lives. Black software engineers have historically faced challenges in reaching their full potential. We ensure Black engineers fulfill the promise of their talents, transform the industry, and use their resulting skills and position to give back to their communities.

Global Zero

Website: Global Zero

Nuclear weapons threaten every city on the planet with staggering humanitarian, environmental and economic loss. So long as they exist we will never be safe.

30 years ago, there were 70,300 nuclear weapons on the planet. Today, an estimated 13,410 nuclear weapons remain. By 2030, we could remove all nuclear weapons from military service and consign them to the dustbin of history.

Working with political leaders, senior military commanders and national security experts from across the political spectrum and in every nuclear-armed region of the world, we are working to achieve historic Global Zero Accords that would ensure that all nuclear weapons are permanently dismantled.

The Privilege Escalation Foundation

We believe brilliant minds deserve safe bodies. Founded by Kris Nóva in 2021 with nothing more than a broken heart, hope, and a linux server in San Francisco, California.

Our dream is to enable gender confirming healthcare, financial resources, and overall support for transgender minds in STEM.

We believe that a brilliant mind should never be held back by their body.

Pin-Ups for Vets

Run by Chris Short’s longtime friend, Gina Elise, this charity helped me get through some tough deployments while I served in the US Air Force.

Website: Pin-Ups For Vets

My late Grandpa Lou served in the Army for 4 years during World War II. I wanted to do something to honor his name. I always loved the romance of those bygone eras - especially the 1940’s - and I drew inspiration from the World War II pin-up girls, whose photos and paintings boosted morale for our soldiers fighting overseas.

I came up with the idea to recreate a nostalgic pin-up calendar that would serve three purposes:

  1. The calendars would be sold to raise funds for our hospitalized Veterans.
  2. The calendars would be delivered as gifts to our ill and injured Veterans with messages of appreciation from the donors.
  3. The calendars would be sent to our deployed troops to help boost morale and to let them know that Americans back home are thinking of them.

K2 Challenge via The Cloudcast

Website: The Cloudcast

Since 2013, our community has raised over $27,000 to help the UNC Children’s Hospital. We hope to continue that tradition in a big way again this year. Every little bit helps! Please join us through a donation, or come run the race with us!

Previously Supported Charities (bad ones)

Free Software Foundation

Once they ditched Stallman they were deserving of my support even though they’re a little more zealous than I am about open source. Now that Stallman is back, I’ve rescinded all support for FSF.

Electronic Frontier Foundation

I used to support the EFF somewhat overtly too. But, over the years, they’ve become more rigid and must adjust to the times. Specifically, EFF defended a well-known hate site, thus signing off on the despicable behavior portrayed upon my friends, seemingly hoping it would continue unfettered because of freedom. That’s not freedom, it’s privilege. It’s very disappointing for a number of reasons as EFF has done so much good.

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