We did it Tor community!

The onion layers have peeled back, and we are thrilled to announce that the Tor community has reached its 2024 year-end fundraising campaign goal. This achievement is a direct result of the community's collective efforts and the incredible support from Power Up Privacy.

Power Up Privacy's $300,000 match was a testament to their faith in the Tor community's ability to make a difference. Their generosity helped propel us to new heights, and we are excited to report that the community not only reached the match but exceeded expectations, ultimately raising $816,141.70.

From October to December 2024, you all came together to support an essential fundraising campaign. This effort aimed to raise funds for the free and open source tools like the Tor network, Tor Browser, Tails, onion services, Snowflake, and the ecosystem of tools and services maintained by the Tor Project.

Your support matters.

We want to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who contributed to the campaign in any way. Whether you donated, shared the campaign, promoted volunteer efforts, attended an event, or joined our newsletter, your support is invaluable. We couldn't have achieved this success without the collective efforts of the Tor community.

So, what does exceeding this goal mean for the Tor Project?

In short, exceeding this goal means stability. Five years ago, the Tor Project set a strategic goal to diversify its funding sources and to increase our yearly revenue. Having a broad coalition of organizations, companies, and people that support our nonprofit means that if one funding source is disrupted or disappears, we can continue offering Tor for free and keep the organization's (figurative) lights on while we raise money to replace that gap.

Given the uncertainty and instability in today's nonprofit funding ecosystem, exceeding our year-end campaign goal this year means the Tor Project has extra stability and security that other nonprofits and open source projects don't have. Thank you for believing in Tor to such a degree that you help keep it strong and stable. 💜

You can also verify that your donations are being managed carefully through third-party data sources: the Tor Project has a Four-Star Charity rating from Charity Navigator, and has been awarded Candid's Platinum Seal of Transparency. This demonstrates our commitment to openness and honesty in how we manage our finances and use your investment for a greater impact.

What's coming next in 2025?

With your support, we're remaining clear-eyed about the many challenges ahead of all of Tor and our users this year. Governments around the world continue to advance surveillance and censorship technologies, and these tools are deployed against citizens to chill dissent and halt the free flow of information. Encryption is under attack from multiple directions in many jurisdictions. The lesson we learned from 2024 is that solidarity and collaboration are our greatest strengths in the face of these challenges.

That means this year, your support will help us to:

• Improve the Tor experience for our users everywhere.

• Make Tor easier to integrate into other applications, so the ecosystem of privacy-preserving tech can thrive together.

• Bring the Tor community together with relay operator meetups, localization meetups and trainers meetups.

• Support our global partners with digital security trainings.

• Strengthen our tools and strategies to advance Internet freedom, in collaboration with a community of initiatives, organizations, and people who believe in the same mission of a free and open Internet.

We want to amplify the words of our Executive Director, Isabela Fernandes,

"We will strive to make sure that our technology is available, usable and safe. We will continue to support users all around the world and continue to spread knowledge by teaching others on how to train people on Tor and other digital security tools. We will be aligned with those who are working to defend human rights and digital rights all around the world. You can count on us. And we know we can count on you too."

Thank you again for supporting Tor and our mission. We look forward to sharing our work this year and beyond.