Help people keep access to information.
When a news site or messaging service is blocked, people need another way to reach it. Your support helps Outline Foundation develop, test, and share the technology that communities and app teams can use to respond.
Keep working as censorship changes
Censorship is a cat-and-mouse game. Censors adapt their methods, and techniques that work today may stop working tomorrow. Staying ahead takes ongoing research, testing, and improvements to the tools people use.
A monthly gift gives us steady support to keep doing that work, so we can prepare for new blocks and help communities respond when they happen.
What your support sustains
Technology people can use
Keep Outline VPN useful and improve the shared technology developers can bring into other apps, so people have more ways to connect as blocking changes.
Research others can build on
Investigate how censorship works, test possible responses, and publish findings and methods that others can use.
Collaboration that puts improvements to work
Help app teams integrate and test improvements. Document what works and learn from the operators and communities using the technology.
Fund a capability with several paths to adoption
A connection technique developed for one need can become a shared component that Outline VPN and other applications adopt. Its creator can concentrate on the capability, while app teams bring it to people through products they already use. The investment can benefit several products as each team integrates and releases the improvement.
There are several ways to support that process:
- Sustain Outline engineering. Maintain the VPN and SDK, develop tools and research, and help teams integrate improvements.
- Fund independent developers directly. Support a contributor building a compatible component, with a scope and agreement arranged with that developer.
- Support adoption and evaluation. Help app teams test and integrate a capability, and providers evaluate it under the conditions their communities face.
Donations through this website support the Foundation’s work. Funders can also work directly with independent contributors; shared interfaces allow their work to benefit the ecosystem without passing through the Foundation.
The work also produces knowledge. Operators and communities contribute testing, deployment experience, and feedback that improve shared tools, methods, and research. That learning informs the next round of engineering.
For a specific project, we want to identify the capability, the teams that could adopt it, the integration work, and the benefit to evaluate. Adoption counts help show use; a result also needs evidence of what changed for people.
Give
Choose a monthly gift to sustain ongoing work, or make a one-time contribution.
Your gift supports Outline’s work. Brave New Software (BNS), our fiscal sponsor, hosts our donation campaign on its Givebutter account.
About our organization and fiscal sponsorship
You’ll continue to Givebutter to choose your amount and giving frequency and complete your gift.
Discuss funding
Help fund a new connection technique, bring an improvement into more apps, or support research into censorship. We welcome conversations with funders, publishers, developers, researchers, and community organizations.
Tell us what you want to make possible and how your organization would like to contribute. We can explore the scope, evidence, milestones, and resources the work would need.
Email bizdev@getoutline.org to discuss funding or collaboration.
Questions about supporting the work
Why give monthly?
The challenge keeps changing. Monthly support helps us plan and sustain the research, maintenance, testing, and collaboration needed to keep responding.
Can I make a one-time gift?
Yes. A one-time contribution supports the same continuing work. Choose the giving frequency that works for you.
What does shared technology make possible?
A useful improvement can benefit Outline’s own tools and other applications that adopt it. Developers and operators put that improvement into use for their audiences and communities.
Are donations a way to buy VPN access?
Donations support the Foundation’s work. Independent operators run Outline services and provide access keys. To run a service or connect to one, visit the product site.