Why support us?

Put simply, without support from our readers the project will not be able to continue. It is of vital importance to us that all the content is available for free, without paywalls, and without the presence of intrusive advertising. This means that we need help from the people that enjoy the site to give a little something back to ensure that the project can go on into the future. This won’t just enable us to keep on bringing you more wondrous and strange things from the history of art, literature and ideas, but it shall also help to ensure such public domain works are free for everyone to enjoy in the digital age. We see ourselves as at the heart of the fight to keep the public domain free from restrictions as it goes online. This vast commons of material is an invaluable and indispensable good, which – like our natural environment and our physical heritage – deserves to be explicitly recognised, protected and appreciated.

What will the money go towards?

We are a not-for-profit project meaning all money goes back into the site to keep it running, namely: paying for the 350+ hours needed a month to run the site, rising server costs, and IT support.

How much do we need?

The Public Domain Review is a relatively inexpensive project to run. We are currently getting in a little over $70,000 a year, which is only just enough to keep things afloat. We are so happy to get to this stage, but we want to do so much more. Our target is, by 2022, to reach $100,000 a year. Such an amount would enable all kinds of wonderful things to happen, including being able to create a community of paid contributors, as well as paying for a (much needed) additional full-time member of the team.

As of June 2020 the group of Friends is around 1600 members strong! We’ve set the next goal to increase this to 1750 members by the end of the mid-year fundraiser, which we figure will be a great step on the road to our ideal of $100,000 per annum.

Any other way I can help?

Of course. Another great way to contribute to the project is to buy something from our online shop – we get about 20% from each item sold. You can also buy something via the “Further Reading” section of our site – Amazon will give us a small percentage of the sale price (about 4.5%). Also, of course, spreading the word as much as possible, letting people know about the project, all helps a lot.

Any other questions please feel free to email us on support@publicdomainreview.org.