Funding internet freedom together: results from our first participatory funding round | The Tor Project

Funding internet freedom together: results from our first participatory funding round

by pavel<br>| August 17, 2026

What if funding internet freedom wasn't driven by a few large donors, but by how many people showed up? What if $1 dollar could go as far as $100? Earlier this year, we set out to answer these questions by launching a participatory funding campaign. The goal was to test new funding mechanisms to support critical digital infrastructure at a moment of systemic funding instability.

The round officially closed on June 19th, and the results give us reason to be encouraged. Today, we can share that the community showed up: more than $200,000 USD has been raised in total, with $174,536 being distributed to  participating grantee projects.

More than the total, what matters is how we got there: 580 unique donors made 662 contributions, with an average donation size of $41. The direct donation total was modest compared to a traditional Tor fundraising campaign, but that was baked into the design. Participation helped shape how matching funds were allocated (by using the quadratic funding algorithm), turning community support into financial impact for participating projects.

Why did we run this experiment?

There is an entire ecosystem of internet freedom tools that help people communicate safely, access information, document censorship, share files securely, and protect their privacy. These tools are often used as emergency infrastructure, but funded like optional projects.

Many depend on small teams doing difficult, long-term work that is invisible until urgently needed. When funding sources shift suddenly or disappear, the effects are immediate: teams reduce staffing, delay development, scale back infrastructure, and narrow support for the communities that depend on them.

That fragility became impossible to ignore after a major policy shift in 2025 disrupted long-standing funding for parts of the internet freedom community. Some projects had grants rescinded in the middle of active contracts. Others were suddenly forced to rethink whether they could continue operating at the same scale, or at all.

That highlighted a deeper problem with centralized funding. When public-interest infrastructure depends too heavily on one funder, a single decision can put essential work at risk---whether that funder is a government, foundation, company, or individual patron. For tools that people rely on in moments of crisis, that is not a sustainable model.

What the community made possible

We saw an opportunity to test new ways of sustaining public goods funding. Rather than replace traditional nonprofit funding, the campaign aimed at testing the impact of collective investment and shared responsibility in response to the challenges of funding for public-interest technology.

The campaign brought together privacy, internet freedom, cryptocurrency, and open-source communities to support 10 participating projects working across censorship circumvention, secure communications, secure journalism, and critical digital infrastructure.

Final project allocations are:

Project<br>Direct donations<br>Donor units<br>QF share<br>Match<br>Total to project

Onion Browser<br>$11,854<br>190<br>63.3%<br>$99,266<br>$111,119

Unredacted<br>$5,262<br>129<br>22.6%<br>$35,467<br>$40,729

Osservatorio Nessuno<br>$2,894<br>84<br>7.5%<br>$11,740<br>$14,633

Paskoocheh (ASL19)<br>$390<br>32<br>0.6%<br>$4,611<br>$5,000

OpenArchive<br>$462<br>23<br>0.4%<br>$4,538<br>$5,000

SecureDrop<br>$475<br>19<br>0.3%<br>$4,525<br>$5,000

Ricochet Refresh<br>$930<br>34<br>1.0%<br>$4,070<br>$5,000

OONI<br>$986<br>24<br>0.8%<br>$4,014<br>$5,000

OnionShare<br>$1,066<br>53<br>2.4%<br>$3,934<br>$5,000

Miaan Group<br>$2,628<br>23<br>1.2%<br>$2,372<br>$5,000

Total<br>$26,945

100%<br>$174,536<br>$201,481

15% of funds raised were used to cover the staff and infrastructure to build and run the campaign. We kept it as low as possible while still running a secure, privacy-preserving campaign.

Visibility

One of the clearest outcomes from this round was the strength of community support for Onion Browser, which received the largest allocation. That result reflects both the project's role in facilitating Tor access on iOS and the way a participation-based model can amplify projects with strong name recognition and an existing audience. This also showed us where future rounds can improve.

However, some smaller or less widely known projects benefited from this campaign in important non-monetary ways by gaining visibility, followers, and direct outreach from people discovering their work for the first time.

Unredacted shared that many people appeared to discover the project for the first time, and that having the fundraiser visible in Tor Browser was especially valuable for visibility.

Osservatorio Nessuno said the campaign amplified its audience and led to new people getting in touch after discovering its work.

OONI confirmed that broader visibility may have helped increase its social media following, which in turn may...