Tag Archives: philanthropy

It’s Never Too Early to Think About Your Legacy

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The Internet Archive has cultivated thousands of planned giving supporters over the years who have decided when making their legacy plans to include the Internet Archive in them as a nonprofit of choice. Tim, who turned 40, made that decision and decided it was time to think about the organizations that reflect what matters most to him and how he could help sustain their work.

He named the Internet Archive as one of his primary beneficiaries, making him a member of the Internet Archive Legacy Circle.

Growing Up Alongside the Internet

Tim grew up alongside the early internet. He built homepages, joined web rings, learned HTML, and eventually turned that early curiosity into a career working with Linux and open-source technology. “The internet, for me, is like a forest that I’ve grown up in, and I’ve seen change over time.”

Today, the Wayback Machine allows Tim to revisit some of the websites, blogs, and projects he created when he was younger. He also helps preserve the web by running Archive Warrior projects on his own server and regularly uses the Live Music Archive.

Tim, Internet Archive Legacy Circle Member and Monthly Giving Circle Member

Sharing Knowledge With Others

Throughout his career, Tim has often been the person on his team who documents how systems work and shares that information freely with others.

He even wrote a technical book, The Linux Sysadmins Guide to Virtual Disks, to provide the clear, practical guidance he felt was missing. By uploading the book to the Internet Archive, Tim has helped ensure that it remains freely available to anyone who may find it useful.

Tim also recently created famoe.ly, a project that uses the Live Music Archive’s API to analyze concert set lists and help listeners discover recordings.

Giving for Today and Tomorrow

For Tim, planning for the future also inspired him to give today. In addition to including the Internet Archive in his plans, he recently began making a monthly donation. “No reason I can’t start helping while I’m still here.”

Perhaps the most meaningful part of the experience was the peace of mind that came from putting his wishes in place. Tim shared that he now feels less worried after he is gone and less pressure to accomplish everything right now. “I know that if I can’t make the impact I want to while I’m here, I have left a meaningful contribution behind to organizations that are deeply important to me.”

Start Building Your Legacy

Tim’s story is a wonderful reminder that planned giving is not only something to consider later in life. It can begin at any age, with a simple decision about what matters to you, what you can do today, and what you hope will continue far into the future.

The Internet Archive’s estate planning program was established to provide an option for patrons who  wanted to leave a legacy by donating  assets and investments. Over the next decade, two to three trillion dollars of estate assets will transfer from Baby Boomers. Nonprofits have a lot to gain from such a wealth transfer. Therefore, a planned giving program was launched at the Internet Archive in 2022 to leverage this immense giving opportunity.

In 2026, Joy Chesbrough, the Head of Philanthropy who launched the program, decided to hire Janet Glaze to build on the accelerated growth and momentum. “Making patrons and supporters the center of our work is extremely important. Planned giving is an important cornerstone in philanthropy, and a strategic opportunity to establish long-term loyalty with our most trusted supporters”, commented Chesbrough. “I am confident that Janet Glaze will do a great job establishing new opportunities for Legacy Circle members.” By joining the Legacy Circle, supporters become part of a community committed to protecting knowledge and ensuring it remains accessible for generations to come.

If you have already included the Internet Archive in your estate plans, or are considering doing so, we would be grateful to hear from you. Sharing your intentions takes only a minute, and there is no obligation.

Please contact Janet Glaze, the Internet Archive’s Planned Giving Regional Officer if you are interested in leaving a legacy gift. If you have questions or would like to talk through your options, please fill out our Legacy Circle form, email donations@archive.org or leave a message for the Philanthropy Department at 415-561-6767.

We couldn’t do this work without your generosity. Thank you for helping preserve knowledge for generations to come.

Janet Glaze, Planned Giving Regional Officer
Internet Archive Philanthropy

Peer-to-Peer Fundraising at the Internet Archive

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Peer-to-peer (P2P) fundraising allows donors to create their own page and garner donations in support of the Internet Archive. Every donation is tax-deductible, and 100% of all gifts raised directly support ongoing Internet Archive initiatives. Follow the steps below to get started:

1. Go to donate.archive.org/1T

Click “Become a Fundraiser” and choose how you’d like to participate:

– As an Individual – Raise funds on your own.
– Join a Team – Support a specific initiative or a friend’s team.
– Create a Team – Start a group fundraiser.

2. Set up your fundraising page

– If you don’t have a GoFundMe Pro account, you’ll be prompted to create one.
– Add a short headline like “Help Protect Vanishing Culture” or “Support Universal
Access to Knowledge.”
– You can create a custom short URL to make sharing easier (optional).

3. Manage your page

Once your page is live, go to the person icon > “My Profile” to view & manage it.

4. Share!

Share your page with friends, family, and with your social media community. Help us preserve web pages, movies, books, music, and so much more.

Guidelines

To keep our campaigns mission-driven and transparent, all pages must:
– Clearly connect to the Internet Archive’s work
– Reflect our values of openness, inclusivity, and respect

Pages may be removed if they:
– Fundraise for causes unrelated to the Internet Archive
– Lack clarity or appear misleading
– Redirect away from our platform via QR codes or links
– Seek personal or self-interested fundraising

Thank you for supporting the Internet Archive!

Join Our Monthly Giving Circle and Support the Internet Archive!

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Monthly donors sustain our work and ensure that the Internet Archive will always be free for all.

Our supporters have joined us arm-in-arm for decades against corporate interests, censorship, and digital erasure. Your commitment to preserving information and cultural heritage fuels our mission to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge. We want to celebrate you and thank you for being the foundation of our support system. 

Today, we invite you to join the Internet Archive Monthly Giving Circle.

Why Join?

Preservation and Accessibility are at the heart of who we are and what we do, so the following benefits are yours to enjoy when you begin your monthly donation at any level. By becoming a member of our Monthly Giving Circle, you unlock exclusive benefits designed just for you—such as: 

  • Exclusive Webcasts and Virtual Learning Opportunities: Dive deeper into topics you love with access to virtual events and learning sessions.  
  • Giving Circle Discount at Better World Books: Enjoy special savings on your used book purchases with our literacy partner, Better World Books.
  • Access to the Monthly Giving Circle Newsletter: Read our curated monthly newsletter filled with interesting finds from the Archive, surveys to get your input, and information about donor perks.
  • Submit Priority Questions at Book Talks: Have burning questions for featured authors or event presenters? You can submit priority questions for consideration, even if you cannot attend the event live.
  • Celebrations and Thank-You’s: We believe in recognizing and celebrating our supporters. Expect special thank-yous and celebrations at your donation anniversaries.
  • Powering Preservation: The knowledge that your recurring contributions sustain our efforts in digitizing, preserving, and providing access to millions of books, web pages, videos, and more.
  • Additional Petabyte Donor Perk ($250 USD+): We have something special just for our most generous supporters with a monthly contribution of $250 or more. Each month, receive a handpicked book from our staff delivered straight to your doorstep. Enjoy a recommended read directly from our bookshelves to yours!

Joining our Monthly Giving Circle is simple:

  • Head over to our Donate page
    • Ensure you have selected “monthly” as your preferred donation frequency.
  • Enter the amount you wish to contribute each month.
  • Input your payment information and click Donate.

Already a monthly donor? Thank you for being an integral part of our mission! You do not have to take any action to enjoy Monthly Giving Circle benefits. Email donations@archive.org to ensure you receive the Monthly Giving Circle newsletter which shares upcoming events, the latest discount codes, and more.

Together, we can continue expanding access to knowledge for generations.

Gratefully, 
Tom Mayer
Development Coordinator

Have a question about our monthly giving circle? Reach us at donations@archive.org.

Filecoin Foundation Grants 50,000 FIL to the Internet Archive

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Amidst the speculative boom for NFTs and crypto-currencies, one decentralized technology foundation is taking the long view by investing in deep history and the far future. 

Today, the Filecoin Foundation announced a 50,000 FIL grant to the Internet Archive – the largest single donation in the digital library’s 25-year history. 

“Holy Crow! This is a big deal,” said Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive’s founder. “And what are we going to do with it? We’re going to invest it in making the Internet Archive more decentralized, so that our digital history is available from thousands of computers, not just a few. The idea is to make a robust and private Internet that has a history that will persist over decades and maybe centuries.”

Filecoin is a decentralized storage system designed to preserve humanity’s most important information. The creators of Filecoin envisioned an independent foundation that would serve as the long-term governance body for the Filecoin ecosystem. In awarding the grant to the Internet Archive, Filecoin Foundation board chair, Marta Belcher, stressed the two organizations’ “common goal of preserving the web and fostering its future.”

It was back in 2015 that Protocol Labs‘ founder, Juan Benet, first visited the Internet Archive, to share his vision for an academic conference dedicated to preserving “humanity’s greatest treasures using decentralized storage.” Building on these conversations, the Internet Archive organized the  Decentralized Web Summit in 2016 in San Francisco, the first gathering of its kind. Back then, a decentralized web was mostly a concept, with little working code.

Decentralized technologists, Trent McConaghy of Ocean and Juan Benet of Protocol Labs at the 2016 Decentralized Web Summit at the Internet Archive in San Francisco.

Since 2016, the Internet Archive has worked with several decentralized tech startups to create a decentralized prototype of the digital library. And when the Filecoin main net took off in 2020, stored in Filecoin servers were public domain audiobooks and films from the Internet Archive. Together, the two organizations created the Filecoin Archives, a community-led project to curate, disseminate and preserve important open access to information often at risk of being lost.

“It’s wonderful to see Filecoin come of age. We started six years ago by putting out a call to make a Decentralized Web, a web that would serve us better than the current web–one that is now starting to be dominated by just a few tech behemoths. Can we make a game with many winners?” asked Kahle. “Filecoin has made a huge step forward by deploying decentralized storage at the exabyte level. That’s very different from AWS (Amazon Web Services). It has many participants, not just one player. And its protocols are open-source. We want to see more technologies like this. This was the original vision of the Decentralized Web that the Internet Archive was hoping for five, six years ago. And it’s starting to come to fruition and Filecoin is a leader in that area.”

Although purveyors of cryptocurrencies are often accused of being driven only by short-term gain, in this group Kahle sees a different motivation. “This donation by the Filecoin Foundation is significant financially for the Internet Archive, but I’d say it’s a more interesting one than that,” said the Internet Hall of Fame engineer. “It’s a donation by a new generation of technologists that are building interesting new technologies…bringing the Archive along with it to make it so that history is preserved –that the Internet Archive makes it into this next generation. That is an interesting thing! You don’t often see that. But the Filecoin Foundation, Filecoin and IPFS, and Juan Benet himself have always been interested in preserving history and how history can be woven into the present and the future of these technologies.”