This will wrap up my annual charitable giving post that I began on Christmas Eve with a Part 1.
Other Charitable Giving (continued)
Additional charitable giving recipients not listed previously include the following:
- Internet Archive
- Equal Justice Initiative
- The Bail Project
- Monthly recurring donation
- Capital Area Food Bank
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Friends of the Library Mongtomery County, MD
- WETA
Other Giving
In addition to giving for charitable purpose that are tax-deductible, I’ll highlight a few tip jars, Patreon memberships, and other avenues I’ve taken to support people and causes that I find worthwhile.
- The Contraband Wagon
I initially met him through Twitter, and he’s taken on the exceedingly difficult challenge of creating constructive conversations on the issue of race. I had the honor of being a panelist for one of the live conversations he moderated on the issue of race in the tech industry. You can find clips of his conversations on YouTube and join his Patreon to get the full-length conversations. - Mastodon
I began supporting the Mastodon project through Patreon in November 2022 after Elon Musk took over Twitter. As we’ve watched Musk turn Twitter into a propaganda and disinformation platform to (unfortunately successfully) elect Donald Trump, those of us with the means putting money behind efforts to help decentralized social media networks succeed will only grow more important. They recently began selling merchandise which also helps support their operations, which gave me an excuse to buy a stuffed version of their mascot. - Hachyderm
Hachyderm.io is the Mastodon server I moved to in 2023 after initially joining the much larger mastodon.cloud. I began sponsoring them this year with a small monthly contribution via GitHub. - emptywheel
The blog of independent journalist Marcy Wheeler, she’s effectively become the ombudsman of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other mainstream media outlets. She doesn’t just call out shortcomings and failings in their coverage, she clarifies issues that might otherwise be confusing. She’s one of just two journalists I value enough to support directly. - Blacksky
Created and maintained by Rudy Fraser, it is effectively its own social media network for black folks on Bluesky that leverages the AT Protocol. I began contributing to his work this month via Open Source Collective, a fiscal host for numerous open source projects I used back when I was still writing software full time including webpack, vue, ESLint, and thousands of others.
Giving Plans for 2025
I don’t anticipate any changes in my financial giving plans next year beyond possibly giving a bit more to charities I already donate to, and to my church. Once I’ve completed a leadership training program I’m currently taking (in June 2025), I will look for an opportunity to regularly donate my time and expertise to a cause that needs them.