Tor accepts donations in order not to depend on the US state budget.

The Tor Project organization has launched a new campaign to raise funds from the public. One-time and monthly donations are accepted for any amount via Paypal, Dwolla, in Bitcoins, checks and bank transfers. Donations have been accepted before, but now Tor more than ever needs clean money.

In principle, the project does not feel a lack of finance. Until now, it was normally supplied by the US government in order to "promote democracy in totalitarian countries." Government funding is typically 80–90% of Tor’s annual budget. Other sponsors are Reddit, Radio Free Asia, the US National Science Foundation, and others, but these are trifles. The main money comes after all from the budget.

Dependence on the US state budget is not entirely desirable for the Tor project for various reasons.

For example, the US authorities have a theoretical possibility of pressure on Tor under the threat of cancellation of funding. Of course, this is hard to imagine. But still, a more honest and safer for all method of financing would be crowdfunding.
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The donation page includes a photo of Laura Poitras, the director of the famous documentary Citizen Four (Citizenfour) about Edward Snowden. In 2014, this film took the Oscar as the best documentary film.

Laura says that Edward Snowden would never be able to contact her if there were no secure network of anonymizers and other free cryptographic tools: “Journalists need Tor to protect their sources of information and free of charge to investigate. This is a critical tool, and it needs your support. ”

Tor administrators in March 2015 said that crowdfunding will allow to continue the development of hidden services that host .onion sites, IM servers, and so on. It is required to implement support for mobile devices, increase the audience (advertising, promotion?). There is even the idea of ​​developing a completely new generation of hidden services.

The expenses of the non-profit organization The Tor Project are detailed on the financial information page .

For example, here is the consolidated budget for 2013.