This is a copy of our monthly friends newsletter. If you want to get it via email, you can sign up on our about page.

DuckDuckGo friends,

At this time of year we like to think about what we can do for other open source projects through our annual donations. As usual, 50% of the total donation will be decided by your nominations for projects that could benefit. The theme this time is raising the standard of trust online so if you have suggestions, please add them in the comments section of the call for nominations.

Speaking of open source, at the end of last month we held Global Quack & Hack 2 -- a day of learning about and coding Instant Answers with people attending meetups physically and remotely from all over the world. The result was a lot of fun, education, and further improvements to one of DuckDuckGo's best-loved features. For the event, we created a series of videos introducing our development community and how to take part in it. Feel free to read our post-event report and check out the videos.

Even after this event, contributors from around the world are helping our search engine and community improve every day. Each month, we award one contributor with our coveted, "Green Bow Tie" (GBT) award for helping above-and-beyond the call of duty. This month, the GBT goes to:

Amir Sekhavati

Congrats and thank you, Amir!

Finally, thanks to the many other contributors who have also added new Instant Answers, such as:

A big thanks to all our users and contributors.

Until next month!

The DuckDuckGo staff