What We Fund
The Foundation board developed and refined the following program areas through a strategic planning process. We will make multiple grants in each area.
1. Privacy Education for Youth
The Foundation invests in educating users on how to protect themselves and their information from real world and digital threats. This program area focused on implementing, assessing, and disseminating educational strategies aimed at increasing the privacy resilience of children and teens and helping children and teens develop skills and resources to protect themselves in the digital environment throughout life.
2. General Funding for Promotion of User Privacy & Online Safety and Security
The Foundation funds projects and initiatives that promote the cause of user privacy & online safety and security.
3. Understanding Socioeconomic Status and Privacy
The Foundation intends to fund investigation of the privacy experience of people of low socioeconomic status. Since the investigations of John Gilliom and Ellen Alderman, there has been little inquiry into how people living in poverty or individuals marginalized by low socioeconomic status experience privacy. Scholars and advocates have expressed concerns that the poor may be subjected to greater private-sector surveillance by virtue of participation in social service programs and the dynamics of low-wage workplaces.
4. Privacy Education for Businesses
Employees and businesses often lack clear understandings of customer privacy protocols and legislation. The Foundation supports programs that educate enterprises on proper customer information collection and use.
5. Innovation in Privacy Enhancing Technologies
Privacy enhancing technologies have been a long unrealized dream of those who care about digital civil liberties. Yet they remain out of practical reach for the average consumer. The Foundation intends to fund activities that encourage the development of scalable, seamless, multi-platform, easy-to-use, privacy-enhancing technologies.