Hello people of Tor!
The fundraising team accomplished a lot in February.
## Grants
First off, the grants team submitted a full proposal to OTF for UX improvements and we should hear back about the final determination soon. Some additional work was done on a proposal for onion services through OTF (originally submitted in July 2018) and we are pleased that this grant has now moved into the contract phase. We also sent introductory letters to the Overbrook Foundation and the Sigrid Rausing Trust.
We heard back from NLnet that they unfortunately did not accept our proposal to improve the Tor exit scanner. They did move our proposal to fund part of the Browser team’s ESR migration work to the second round, and we should hear whether or not we were accepted for funding soon.
We also submitted a proposal to New Media Ventures for LFP/LFI, and it moved to the second round, but it was unfortunately not accepted.
## Wiki
We now have a Fundraising Team Wiki! Check it out here https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/FundraisingTeam. We have also made updates to the Sponsors Wiki which is linked from that page. I still have to finish documenting the past YE campaigns, but they will be up there soon. Let us know if there is anything you would like to see in this space.
We also want to call out the Grant Work Flow process https://drive.google.com/file/d/17jFJ_cFoB2FRKFhoo3on3SChMKSJPzhF/view?usp=sharing our team uses to prospect, apply for, and manage grants, so you can get an idea of what our team (along with Project Managers and the Finance team) is doing behind the scenes as we apply for funding.
## Special Appeal
We tried raising money to cover the cost of an Outreachy email, but had limited success with an email and push on social media. We plan to apply for their session that begins in December.
## Cryptocurrency
The cryptocurrency donation page https://donate.torproject.org/cryptocurrency launched March 18th, but this has been a culmination of work that began last fall. So far we have raised over $10,000 from the page and have received nice buzz on Twitter. We’ll report more on these efforts and results next month.
Let us know if you have any questions or suggestions.
- Fundraising Team