Due to financial problems, throughout my privacy journey I have only used free tools to enhance my privacy. I was recently thinking about the question: If I had the money to give back to the services I've used, which ones would I donate to? Here is my personal list, which is still a WIP:

I will definitely donate to (15):

• Aegis Authenticator | Donation Link
• F-Droid | Donation Link
• GrapheneOS | Donation Link
• KeePassDX | Donation Link
• KeePassXC | Donation Link
• The Linux Foundation | Donation Link
• LUKS | Donation Link (Help me find!)
• Mullvad | Donation Link (Help me find!)
• The Qubes OS Project | Donation Link
• SimpleX | Donation Link
• SearXNG | Donation Link (Help me find!)
• Tails | Donation Link
• Tor Project | Donation Link
• uBlock Origin | See here
• Whonix | Donation Link

I am very likely to donate to (14):

• Briar | Donation Link
• coreboot | Donation Link
• Electronic Frontier Foundation | Donation Link
• FreeTube | Donation Link
• The Gnu Privacy Guard | See here
• Libreboot | Donation Link
• LibreOffice | Donation Link
• MySudo | Donation Link (Help me find!)
• NewPipe | Donation Link
• OpenStreetMap | Donation Link
• OpenPGP | Donation Link (Help me find!)
• OpenVPN | Donation Link (Help me find!)
• Orbot | Donation Link
• WireGuard | Donation Link

I will most likely donate to (7):

• AnonAddy/addy.io | Donation Link
• GtkHash | Donation Link (Help me find!)
• Joplin | Donation Link
• Lemmy | Donation Link
• LibreWolf | See here
• Monero | Donation Link (Help me find!)
• Nitrokey | Donation Link (Help me find!)

I may donate to (11):

• DuckDuckGo | See here
• Fedora | See here
• GitLab | donations@gitlab.com
• GNOME | Donation Link
• Molly | Donation Link
• AdGuard | Donation Link (Help me find!)
• Organic Maps | Donation Link
• privacy.sexy | Donation Link
• Proton | Donation Link (Help me find!)
• Signal | Donation Link
• Standard Notes | Donation Link (Help me find!)

I may add more as I think of them. Please leave your ideas!

Note: I'm trying my best to avoid turning this into just a list of privacy tools, but that may end up being what it becomes.

Honorable Mentions (9):

There are some services that I support but either don't use or have not matured enough to donate to.

• 2FAS | Donation Link
• Free Software Foundation | Donation Link
• Mozilla (Firefox) | Donation Link
• GNU Image Manipulation Program | Donation Link
• Invidious | Donation Link
• OsmAnd | Donation Link (Help me find!)
• Piped | Donation Link
• Spotube | Donation Link
• Wine | Donation Link

Some math

I realized I never actually specified any amounts that I would donate to each service, so here is most likely how I will spread my money:

For the services I will definitely donate to, I will donate $50 to each services.

For the services I am very likely to donate to, I will donate $40 to each service.

For the services I will most likely donate to, I will donate $30 to each service, for the ones I decide to donate to.

For the services I may donate to, I will donate $20 to each service, for the ones I decide to donate to.

For the honorable mentions, if they ever become part of my official donation list, I will start with a $10 donation and increase it from there.

For those thinking those are small donations, note that if I were to donate those amounts to every service it would be a total donation of over $1,800. That is at least a start, and once I am able to donate I will likely donate the same amount every year.

By no means am I doing this for publicity or congratulations, I am just making my thoughts public and hopefully sparking others to donate to some privacy services. Lots of these services run off of donations, so please try not to take them for granted!

A note from me

There seems to be a misunderstanding about the purpose of this post. I am not posting this to receive criticism for my choices, although I am happy to learn about potential misconceptions I had about certain services (Organic Maps, Mozilla, etc.) This list contains my choices, and your choices may be different. Nor am I posting this to gain attention, media traction, congratulations, or publicity. The purpose of this post is to encourage you to make your own list based on your own criteria, and to potentially share it here. Very few people have actually commented with services that they would/do donate to. I have decided to include my choices as well as links to better help others find what they would donate to. For example, many people may forget to donate to services like GNOME that they use every day without thinking twice about the developers who have worked hard to create it. I'm aware that some of these services are for-profit, have poor business practices, or are based in privacy disrespecting countries, but in my opinion (and again, you should make your own list based on your own opinion) those services deserve my support. I thank everyone who has helped me better formulate my list, but this post isn't meant to be about me. I encourage you to take your time to make your own list of services you really would consider donating to. The draft for this list has taken me over a month. Thank you all for taking the time to read through this, and it is unlikely I will be interacting with this post for a while.

Recent update

I recently went back and changed a few things, adding some I missed. There is drama surrounding Libreboot, and some murky information about which companies provide the best security keys, as well as other stuff. I've decided to abandon this list and remake it elsewhere, maybe to share here. Cheers!