Mightier Acorns

From the incessant ringing of Salvation Army donation buckets to the prolific inundation of end-of-year fundraisers, you may feel overwhelmed by all of the good causes that need financial support this year.

You might be wondering if it is your imagination that the pleas for funding are more desperate than usual: it is not your imagination. Across the board, the content creators we love and the research resources we rely on are being squeezed between a worsening economy, increased reliance on extractive corporate-owned infrastructure, and competition from AI.

Of course, if you’ve been hit hard this year, too, you may be struggling to support the providers and creators you value most. So I thought I would share some suggestions for making your donation budget more impactful, helping both you and those you wish to support.

Use Your Library, Boost Your Budget

When you consider your budget for donations, take the time to review where your money has been going.

For one example, if you pay the $140/yr. fee for an Amazon Prime membership, you may feel like you’re getting a high value for that money, with the availability of “free shipping” or streaming services. However, the things that are “free” for you, the consumer, do cost money, and the story of how Amazon operated at a loss for 20 years as it undersold and bankrupted its competition goes a long way to explain how (like WalMart) they have become the only option for many people to receive services they used to get through a free market. (I’ll leave it to your conscience to research how these corporations spend their money to influence campaigns and public policy.)

Your local public library actually offers many of the services you get through your Prime Membership, including eBook access, streaming services, podcasts, in addition to interlibrary loans and genealogy resources – all of which are free to you, with your library card. (Not to mention personal help from a human when you need it.) The big difference between public libraries and corporate memberships like Amazon is that while Amazon starves creators while extracting profits, libraries boost sales and support those creators. You are paying for the library, anyway, whether you use them or not.

So you could be saving your money and still get the services by going through your library. The real cost to you might be convenience – having to wait for a reservation on a high-demand movie or book, having to drive a couple of miles to pick up your materials.

If you’re paying membership fees or subscriptions to online services, you need to decide if that convenience is worth the price:

• Amazon: $15/mo. or $140/yr.
• NetFlix (no ads): $18/mo. or $215/yr.
• Hulu (no ads): $19/mo. or $228/yr.
• YouTube: $14/mo. or $140/yr.
• Spotify: $12/mo. or $145/yr. (with a $99 annual option)

What to Do With Your Bigger Budget

If you cancel some or all of the examples above, your budget is now bigger by between $100 and $870 per year. These are just a few places I would recommend putting that money, instead:

Support a local public broadcasting outlet. If you’re already supporting your local public station, and want to do more, that link takes you to an Axios article showing which stations need help most after federal funding cuts.

Nebula – if you once found yourself addicted to educational or independent creators on YouTube, you may already know about Nebula, where many of them fled when YouTube began to eat into their revenue streams and block their content. Wikipedia article: Nebula (streaming service)

Escape Artists Foundation – starting in 2005 with Escape Pod, one of the very first audio fiction podcasts, EA has grown into a US registered nonprofit producing five weekly genre-fiction shows for science fiction, horror, fantasy, young adult, and … cats. (Full disclosure, I am an editor for Pseudopod, the horror podcast, and have narrated for Pseudopod and Escape Pod.)

Internet Archive – when I talk about old local histories, as I did in The Publication Puzzle, I’m most likely talking about resources I found on Archive.org. Starting as the Wayback Machine some 30 years ago, the Archive was also recently designated a federal depository library by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who proclaimed the organization a “perfect fit” to expand “access to federal government publications amid an increasingly digital landscape.”¹

Wikipedia – in my opinion, the best example of true, decentralized, evidence-based democracy in action. Because so many editors are doing so much more than I can find time to do, I began supporting them years ago with monthly contributions, and you may notice that I link to them all the time.

Support Your Local Genealogical Society and/or Library

Not all Genealogical Societies are created equal – some are independent of the public library system, some have partnerships with them. If you find that your local society has a genealogical library, and you’re already paying your dues, you can also scour estate sales, secondhand stores, and even online re-sellers like HalfPriceBooks, AbeBooks, or Alibris for materials they might be able to preserve in their collection.

You can also help them and independent publishers by purchasing self-published works (like my own, for one example) that libraries often can’t order (depending on their purchasing policies), and donating them. If you’re going to donate a book for their collection, you may want to contact them first and make sure they know it’s coming, and that it’s an appropriate addition to their collection.

1. Belanger, Ashley, Ars Technica, “Internet Archive’s legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost”, 3 Nov 2025. ↩︎