Overshadowed by the far more established (and profitable) Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and to a less extent by the sweet-hearted Small Business Saturday, GivingTuesday is the Tuesday after the gluttonous gorging of turkey and shopping that heaps over the long weekend from Thursday’s Thanksgiving through the following Monday’s Cyber Monday.
Here are my favorite organizations relating to tech made for the people and offered completely for free, no strings attached, by a host of non-profit groups. They mostly run off donations, so toss ’em a few bucks when you’re feeling generous.
the orgs
The Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF is a non-profit that, for the past 35 years, has pitted itself against titans of Silicon Valley, the US government, and even international monoliths to lobby for the protection of free speech online and digital privacy. None of that comes cheaply.
Signal Foundation. Yeah, that Signal, the secure, end-to-end-encrypted messaging app used by activists and protestors to coordinate without worry of government or corporate surveillance, and by the Pentagon to text its war plans to unassuming journalists.
The Mozilla Foundation. Not everyone knows that the organization that freely offers the Firefox browser is a non-profit that runs off donations. Its primary competition is Google (Chrome), Microsoft (Edge), and Apple (Safari), so dollar bills go a long way toward offsetting the disparity in resources.
LibreOffice. I’m a big fan of LibreOffice, a suite of work apps (like Microsoft Office) offered freely by The Document Foundation, a non-profit organization that offers open-source software that anybody can use in perpetuity. There are no freemium features or nudges to get you to pay. There isn’t even a paid tier available. It’s just all free. I’ve used it for almost nine years, and it’s quite stable and comprehensive, with a word processor, spreadsheet app, presentation app, and more.
Wikipedia. This one hardly needs an introduction. Wikipedia is one of the properties of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Keep information free and belonging to the People. Even just a few dollars can help stave off the crush of those corporations who want to control what you see and how you see it.
Internet Archive. Not everything that goes online stays online forever, it turns out. Back in 2024, the Pew Research Center reported that 38 percent of the webpages that existed in 2013 were no longer online. Internet Archive is the group that runs the Wayback Machine, which snapshots and archives webpages so that the public can access them even after they’re changed or go offline. The idea of “internet history” is still new and immature, but get on the bandwagon and become an early supporter of efforts to preserve early internet history.
And if you’re reading this after GivingTuesday (December 2, 2025), there’s no “Ah, well, I’ll do it next year.” Here’s a wild idea: You can donate on Wednesday, December 3 or Sunday, December 21 or even Saturday, March 7, 2026.
There are 365 good days in a year during which to donate to these organizations; 366 on leap years. Yes, even on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, if you feel like going against the grain.
The post Feel Like Donating This GivingTuesday? These Digital Rights Orgs Could Use a Buck. appeared first on VICE.
