Donation processor (Ko-fi) not yet wired. The donate button arrives when the processor is set up; until then this page describes what your donation would support and what it explicitly does not buy.
What your donation supports
The seven co-equal components of the Foundation's mission:
- Defense of the Public Domain — keeping the canonical Ora codebase and the broader public-domain corpus free of enclosure, including active cultivation of the open-source contributor community across the cognitive tools layer.
- The Free Knowledge Library — building, maintaining, and freely distributing a continuously updated knowledge library, hosted on decentralized public-domain infrastructure rather than on Foundation servers.
- The Free Framework Library — the launch-critical frameworks (tax preparation, public benefits applications, basic legal documents, basic medical synthesis, basic financial planning, basic business operations) and the open-source contribution infrastructure that lets domain experts add to the library.
- Educational and Developmental Work — materials, tutorials, and partnerships with educational institutions and contemplative traditions.
- Public-Interest Advisory Function — considered analysis of cognitive automation's consequences, public, analytical, mission-bounded.
- Service to Neurodivergent Populations and Others Left Behind — frameworks designed for cognitive differences, accessible educational materials, partnerships with the communities and organizations that serve these populations.
- Software Displacement at Cognitive Tools Chokepoints — free public-domain alternatives to commercial software that has built rent-extraction structures around tasks the cost-of-software-production no longer justifies.
What your donation does not buy
No naming rights. No governance influence. No programmatic earmarking that conflicts with mission. No special access. The Foundation operates under donor-screening principles adapted from Creative Commons. Donors who require any of the above are declined.
Pre-incorporation framing
The Foundation is in formation. Incorporation is donor-gated — the legal work begins when a donor materializes whose gift requires a tax-exempt counterparty. Until then, donations are received under the founder's name, applied directly to the Foundation's work as described in the Founding Philosophy, and not commingled with personal funds. The founder does not draw compensation from pre-incorporation donations beyond direct reimbursement of legitimate expenses, with that reimbursement subject to the same compensation discipline that will apply post-incorporation.
Donors who require tax deductibility before giving should wait until 501(c)(3) status is in place, or consider supporting the work through a donor-advised fund or other vehicle that provides tax treatment they can rely on.
Major gifts
Major gifts are welcomed and are screened against published exclusionary, cautionary, and positive criteria. The screening framework is detailed on the governance page. For donors seeking to make major gifts that require their own legal vehicle (a separately incorporated supporting organization, a donor-advised fund arrangement, or similar), the Foundation can accommodate this through a § 509(a)(3) supporting organization or other appropriate structure created at the time of the gift, with the donor's funding covering the legal work.
Other ways to support the work
Donating money is not the only way to support the Foundation's work. Anyone with relevant domain expertise can contribute frameworks to the framework library; anyone with software-engineering capability and clean-room legal hygiene can contribute to Stage 2 software-displacement work; anyone with an institutional relationship that intersects the Foundation's mission can propose a partnership. The contribution model is described on the framework library page and the software displacement page.