> There’s also the elephant in the room. Although “Internet freedom” appropriations may be safe for now, a large chunk of this funding pool could also quickly dry up, leaving many projects scrambling to keep the lights on.

I think this an oft-overlooked, yet important point to raise, especially in the current American political context. We've already seen superficial budget cuts (or attempts at them) by this administration such as to the NEA. Especially given the political context in which some of the OTF-funded applications operate, I think we should be grateful for as long as this funding stays off the radar, but not rely on it as a long-term funding solution for "Internet freedom"-type projects.

Too many projects in the not-for-profit tech/Internet freedom/FOSS realm depend too heavily on grants in general, not just from the government. You aptly point out some of the problems that creates as far as maintaining an application over time. We saw recently with Tor a move away from DoD grants and towards crowd-funding. This is important for the independence, trustworthiness, and accountability of a project as well.

...

So one more thing I want to touch on about the donation mechanism in general. I really, really like how easy you've made it to contribute by building the mechanism into the app and making it an in-app purchase. The biggest barrier to me donating to most projects is visibility and ease of use of the mechanism. It's a combination of the out-of-sight-out-of-mind concept and the fact we're lazy as humans and sometimes just don't want to fill out repetitive multi-page forms to make a donation. By supporting small-dollar, recurrent donations and making the mechanism dead-simple, I think you're doing the most you can ensure the people who care and use the application will donate.