I built the first version of freeCodeCamp's website in 2014. And now more than half a million people use freeCodeCamp every day.

Our tiny charity is able to help so many people thanks to clever use of technology and the help of thousands of volunteers.

In this brief article, I'll tell you how you can support our mission by donating. And I'll give you all the information you need to get involved.

How transparent is freeCodeCamp.org?

Very. We have a Platinum transparency rating from GuideStar.org.

You can download our IRS Determination Letter here.

And you can download our most recent 990 (annual tax report) here.

How efficient is freeCodeCamp?

freeCodeCamp's budget is much smaller than most comparable charities. Part of that is because I am admittedly bad at fundraising. We haven't brought in professional fundraisers. Instead, I just do everything myself.

Am I a fool for doing this? Maybe. But I can look you in the eye and tell you exactly where all the money is going, because I oversee everything myself.

I can also tell you that – on a budget of only a few hundred thousand dollars per year – we have been able to help millions of people.

What's the most common way people support freeCodeCamp?

You can set up a simple \(5 / month donation to our charity here. We are a very donation-efficient charity, and every \)5 you donate will help us provide more than 250 hours of learning to people around the world.

More than 11,000 kind people support us this way every month.

Depending on where you are in the world, $5 per month may not seem like much money. But it does add up, and this monthly approach makes it easier for our charity to budget its mission.

How can I make a one-time donation?

If you'd prefer to make one-time donations, you can support freeCodeCamp's mission whenever you have cash to spare. You can use this link to donate whatever amount feels right through PayPal.

If you'd prefer to use a credit card to make a one-time donation, here are some quick links you can use. Just click the "checkout" button and you can input your information securely into Stripe (only they will see your credit card information):

• Make a one-time donation of $20

• Make a one-time donation of $65

• Make a one-time donation of $100

Does freeCodeCamp accept donations in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies?

Yes, and we would welcome your cryptocurrency donations. Please email quincy@freecodecamp.org and he can give you a wallet address for whichever currency you'd like to donate.

Can I mail a physical check?

Yes, we would welcome a check. You can mail it to us at:

Free Code Camp, Inc.
3905 Hedgcoxe Rd
PO Box 250352
Plano, TX 75025

How can I set up matching gifts from my employer, or payroll deductions?

This varies from employer to employer, and our charity is already listed in many of the big donation-matching databases.

Some people are able to volunteer for freeCodeCamp and their employer matches by donating a fixed amount per hour they volunteer. Other employers will match any donations the donors make up to a certain amount.

If you need help with this, please email me directly: quincy@freecodecamp.org.

How can I set up an Endowment Gift to freeCodeCamp.org?

This would be a huge help. Since this is a more manual process, I can help walk you through it personally. Please email me directly at quincy@freecodecamp.org.

How can I donate stock to freeCodeCamp.org?

We would welcome your stock donations. Please email me directly and I can help you with this, and share our charity’s brokerage account details: quincy@freecodecamp.org.

How can I set up a Legacy gift to freeCodeCamp.org?

We would be honored to put such a gift to good use helping people around the world learn to code. Depending on where you live, this may also be tax exempt.

You can add this language, or something like it, to your will:

I give, devise, and bequeath [the sum of _____ USD (or other currency) OR _____ percent of the rest and residue of my estate] to freeCodeCamp.org (Free Code Camp, Inc. tax identification number 82-0779546), a charitable corporation organized under the laws of the State of Delaware, United States, currently located at 3905 Hedgcoxe Rd, PO Box 250352, Plano, Texas, 75025 United States, to be used for its general charitable purposes at its discretion.

And I'd like to thank the Wikimedia Foundation for providing this formal language for us to use.

Again, if you have any questions about this process, please email me at quincy@freecodecamp.org.

Can I donate Microsoft Rewards points or Bing points?

Yes. If you use Microsoft Rewards, you can donate your points to freeCodeCamp through Give with Bing. These are sometimes called Bing points or Microsoft points.

You can use this Give with Bing link for Free Code Camp, Inc. to make a one-time points donation, or you can set up a monthly recurring donation of your points.

This does not charge your credit card. Microsoft converts your points redemption into a cash donation through Benevity, and those donations help support freeCodeCamp’s servers, services, staff, and education initiatives.

Can I get a donation receipt so that I can deduct my donation from my taxes?

Absolutely. Just forward the receipt from your transaction to donors@freecodecamp.org, and tell us you'd like a receipt and any special instructions you may have, and we'll reply with a receipt for you.

I set up a monthly donation, but I need to update or pause the monthly recurrence. How can I do this?

Just forward one of your monthly donation receipts to donors@freecodecamp.org and tell us what you'd like us to do. We'll take care of this for you and send you confirmation.

Is there anything else I can learn about donating to freeCodeCamp.org?

I think that's everything. I’m just a teacher who is still learning a lot of this as I go.

If there is some other way you'd like to support our charity and its mission that isn't listed here, or if you have any questions at all, please email me at quincy@freecodecamp.org.

I am honored by the faith you have placed in freeCodeCamp.org to be a good steward of the global developer community. We will take seriously all donations, and any questions you may have about our charity. May peace be with you.

If you need a donation receipt for your taxes, please forward your receipt to donors@freecodecamp.org and tell us you’d like a receipt. We’ll get one for you ASAP :)

This link will take you to Stripe for secure check-out.

Thanks again for supporting open source education for all.

If you need a donation receipt for your taxes, please forward your receipt to donors@freecodecamp.org and tell us you’d like a receipt. We’ll get one for you ASAP :)

This link will take you to Stripe for secure check-out.

Thanks again for supporting open source education for all.

If you need a donation receipt for your taxes, please forward your receipt to donors@freecodecamp.org and tell us you’d like a receipt. We’ll get one for you ASAP :)

This link will take you to Stripe for secure check-out.

Thanks again for supporting open source education for all.

2022 has been a massive year for the freeCodeCamp community. People around the world are using freeCodeCamp to expand their skills and advance their careers.

Here's a breakdown of site usage across the four main pillars of the freeCodeCamp community: /learn (the curriculum), /news (the publication), the community forum, and the community YouTube channel.

+---------+-------------+---------------+---------------+
| Pillar  |    2020     |     2021      |     2022      |
+---------+-------------+---------------+---------------+
| /forum  |  71,977,609 |   103,959,476 |   116,060,348 |
| /learn  | 308,290,683 |   471,104,018 |   622,195,468 |
| /news   | 246,329,943 |   331,995,923 | 1,196,199,035 |
| YouTube | 764,332,218 | 1,217,082,060 | 2,386,030,860 |
+---------+-------------+---------------+---------------+

Note that all of these numbers come directly from Google Analytics and YouTube Analytics.

Also note that this does not include all the people who are using freeCodeCamp's Android app, quizzing themselves on DeveloperQuiz.org, listening to Code Radio, or playing Learn to Code RPG.

It's wild to see so many people making use of our community's free learning resources. I have to pinch myself every year when I look at these numbers to prepare this report for you.

But then I remember the scale of the challenge. There are so many busy adults around the world who are trying to learn new skills.

People are teaching themselves how to use tools like SQL, Linux, spreadsheets, and scripting languages. They're improving their math skills and their workplace English skills.

The freeCodeCamp community still has so much room to grow, and so many learners we can help.

We'll continue to meet busy people where they already are. Helping them learn on their own schedule, after they've put the kids to bed or finished work for the day.

All 4 pillars of the freeCodeCamp community grew this year. After averaging 60% year-on-year growth in usage since 2016, we somehow managed to grow by more than 100% this year.

We first launched freeCodeCamp.org 8 years ago, and have now delivered nearly 10 billion minutes of instruction.

The closet office in my San Francisco Bay Area area apartment where I coded the first lines of the freeCodeCamp open source codebase back in October 2014. Update: I now have an entire room to work in. With a window.

At our current level of operational efficiency, every dollar you donate to freeCodeCamp provides dozens of hours of learning for people around the world.

I want to thank the hundreds of kind human beings who volunteered their time and talents to the community this year. Thank you. We've compiled a list of our 2022 Top Contributors.

I also want to thank the 8,384 kind people who are now donating to our charity each month. The average donation is $5, and this quickly adds up.

If you want to support our charity and our mission, become a monthly supporter. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so you may be able to deduct your donations from your taxes.

Me with the kids: Jocelyn and Quentin. They'll learn to code when they feel ready :)

Thanks again for being a part of the freeCodeCamp community. Have a fantastic holiday season.

2017 draws to a close. It’s been my third year earning-to-give, and another year full of changes.

At various points this year I seriously considered starting a company. This made me ask myself: does it still make sense to donate a third of my income this year if I’m considering something that risky? It’s all well and good to donate money, but maybe it makes sense to do it later in life. Look at Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk — doesn’t it make more sense to first maximize your success, and then donate down the road?

I’ve faced this question more than once, and many people have written me with similar thoughts. Within the effective altruism community, it’s been a perennial debate. But my answer has always been firm: you should give now rather than later.

I have four main reasons why you shouldn’t delay your giving.

Compounding interest

There’s a common argument that goes like this: if you donate later instead of donating now, you can get compounding interest on your capital. If you have $100,000 now, doesn’t it make sense to invest it into high-growth assets, double it, and donate $200,000 later?

For the sake of argument, let me grant that you always have investment opportunities that will give you compounding interest. It begs the question — if you keep doubling your capital, at what point should you stop doubling it and finally give it away?

Let’s say your capital is x = 1000. With some amount of compounding interest, eventually x will be 10,000. But then it should take the same amount of time for x to become 100,000, and then eventually 1,000,000. If you take this argument seriously, when are you suppose to decide “okay, this has compounded enough, it’s time to give it away”?

If anything, it seems like the more money you have, the more valuable the compounding interest will be, so the less you should ever want to give. This seems paradoxical.

The natural answer might be to give right before you die (this won’t be optimal tax-wise, but ignore that). If that’s the case, then it’s only by accident of our lifespans that we should give money at all. If healthcare reached the level that you could extend your life indefinitely, then there would be no point at which it would actually make sense to cut the cord and donate money.

This seems clearly wrong.

A stronger version of the argument goes like this: early in your career, it makes more sense to invest in yourself and your own runway so you can increase your earning potential and take more high-value risks. So shouldn’t you invest in yourself early on, and then donate later?

This I agree with more. If you’re early in your career or need to build your credentials/expertise, or move to an area where your skills are in higher demand (generally expensive cities), then I don’t think you should be donating a massive amount. You’re still at a phase where investing in yourself produces extremely high returns.

But for myself, I’m past that phase. It’s no longer onerous for me to invest in skill-building (training, conferences, books, etc.), I already live in SF, and I’m pretty efficient with my time. I could definitely use more runway, but I’m not genuinely capital-constrained here, since if you want to build a company in the Bay, capital is pretty cheap.

In other words, past a certain point, it’s not that expensive to optimize your career and you won’t have unlimited capacity to absorb new capital investment. Once you’re trained up, live in a high-demand area, and have a bit of runway, you don’t really need much else.

(Note these arguments don’t apply as elegantly to capital-intensive professions such as professional gambling, daytrading, or investing. In those cases I do think it might make sense to delay giving until you start hitting diminishing returns with your own capital.)

Flow-through effects

But the previous argument only considers one side of the value transfer — it only considers what you yourself can do with the money. It ignores the crucial fact that effective giving also produces compounding returns for the charity.

Take the simple case of donating directly to the poor via GiveDirectly. If we raise more people out of poverty or enable them to acquire more education or skills, that might cost $1,000 now. But those people can go on to contribute to their economy, develop their community, and ultimately further reduce poverty there. Your donation also compounds.

Most people imagine charitable giving as temporarily putting a band-aid on a social wound. But if that’s the case, it’s a sign that the intervention itself is not very effective. Effective giving tends to produce compounding benefits and flow-through effects. Thus you should expect the rate of return on the very best charities to have higher returns than marginal self-investment or the returns you can make in capital markets.

This should strongly bias you toward giving now rather than later.

Influencing others

The third reason why you should give now is because it influences the people around you.

I might have been able to give more today if I’d invested all of my previous donations into index funds and donated the proceeds now. But by giving each year and writing about it, if I galvanize even one more person to earn-to-give, then I’ve likely doubled my effect on the world.

People often believe that charity should be private or secret. I strongly disagree. The best way to inspire people to give is to do it yourself. So give loudly, proudly, and actively encourage others to do the same.

From the emails I’ve received from blog readers, I know that I’ve convinced several people to learn about effective altruism and follow this same path. Influencing the people around you is an powerful lever, and I’ve probably had more impact on the world by influencing others than I’ve had through my own giving.

Influencing yourself

The last reason is the most subtle, but I think the most important. Giving now cultivates your own virtue, and ensures that you’ll continue to live up to your own ideals.

You are not a perfect creature. Even if you intend to do something hard now, whether that’s to donate money, swear off alcohol, go vegan, or whatever sacrifice you intend to make, you always have to factor in the possibility that you’ll change your mind or regress.

People are terrible at predicting their own regressions. I’ve met enough people who are former vegans, former renunciates, even former earn-to-givers. It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing there’s something special about your conviction that makes you immune to this. But everyone is vulnerable to value drift.

You get older. Your circumstances change. And your fervor becomes fuzzier. More distant. More negotiable.

When I’m 50, I’ll probably be as distant from my present self as I am from my 15-year-old self.

So how can you stay true to your ideals? It’s simple. Make a habit of virtue. Stay inside it. Keep it as a part of your life. Have it seep into your bones. Give year after year, even if it slows you down.

The path is long and sometimes disenchanting, but virtue and discipline are the only way forward.

So that’s why I’m giving now rather than later. And I feel pretty damn good about it.

My 2017 donations

In total this year I’m donating $45,370.00 (slightly less than last year due to not working for a few months after I left Airbnb).

Of that sum, $11,340 I’m donating to the Against Malaria Foundation — the same organization I donate to every year, and the #1 top ranked charity on Givewell for multiple years.

The Against Malaria Foundation is a non-profit that funds and distributes anti-malarial bednets in malaria-ravaged countries, primarily in Africa and Asia. A single bednet can be funded and distributed for ~$4, making them perhaps the most cost-effective life-saving intervention in the world.

The remaining 75% of my donations this year, $34,030, I’m donating to a donor-advised fund to be donated to a promising AI safety charity. The fund is managed by my good friend Alex Flint, a computer vision PhD from Oxford who’s very well-versed in AI risk (if you’d likewise want to donate to this fund, I can put you in touch with him).

For those who are unfamiliar with AI safety, you might have heard folks Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Sam Harris making pronouncements about the dangers of uncontrolled artificial general intelligence. AI is advancing rapidly, and it’s likely to grow and control more of the infrastructure of the world far faster than we can develop our understanding of how to make it safe. So far the world has invested an remarkably small amounts into thinking about how to make AIs more safe, and I think this will be an increasingly important problem as AI research advances. If you’re new to this, I recommend reading this, then this, then this.

In general the study of AI risk is so enormously underfunded, it’s clear to me that this was a pressing area that needed more attention and capital. I don’t know as much about the charities on the ground, so a donor-advised fund allows me to let someone I trust make better-researched decisions than I could in this area.

So that’s it for 2017. 2018 should have a lot more in store. I’ll likely continue writing about blockchain and crypto, and hopefully there’ll be some exciting new developments I can share!

Bring it on, 2018.

—Haseeb