About the Rapid Response Fund
As internet freedom continues to decline, human rights defenders, journalists, and other at-risk communities in repressive information contexts face mounting digital emergencies that traditional funding mechanisms are often not equipped to resolve in a timely manner.
OTF meets this challenge through its Rapid Response Fund (RRF). The Fund provides emergency support to independent media outlets, journalists, and human rights defenders facing clear and time-sensitive digital attacks and threats. Support through this fund helps individuals and groups stay safe in repressive information environments, regain online access, protect against future attacks, and combat sudden censorship events.
The fund also provides rapid support to address new software vulnerabilities—including the development and deployment of emergency technical patches—to ensure critical internet freedom tools remain secure.
We offer direct financial support as well as services from our community partners. If you’re an at-risk individual or organization who is facing a state-sponsored digital emergency or threat and you don’t have the technical capacity to address it, our RRF partners can quickly provide digital security solutions.
OTF maintains open agreements with these digital security experts to provide a diverse array of services, including digital security audits and mentoring, language localization services, urgent risk mitigation, organizational security improvements, forensic analysis of digital attacks, secure web hosting, and more.
Rapid Response Fund Interventions
Through the RRF, OTF has supported more than 100 interventions in over 40 countries.
Support includes (but is not limited to) digital security audits and risk mitigation, crisis response planning, forensic analysis of digital attacks, recovery of compromised websites, secure web hosting, localization of circumvention and privacy tools, and establishing VPN servers. For example:
When the Iranian government brutally cracked down on freedom of expression in response to anti-regime protests following the death of Mahsa Amini, RRF support increased the availability of the Tor Browser (a secure web browsing service) in response to rapidly increasing demand.
When Myanmar Now, one of Myanmar’s largest independent media outlets was almost entirely blocked, OTF’s RRF partner Qurium Media Foundation deployed mirror sites, (replicas of the original, blocked sites)—ensuring residents could access this important publication.
Why We Expanded Our Community Partners
OTF recently expanded the number of RRF community partners from three to nine in order to meet the urgent and extraordinary needs of high-risk individuals and communities experiencing state-sponsored digital attacks and threats. These partners possess unique technical capabilities, as well as regional and issue-specific expertise. They’re globally dispersed and equipped to handle digital emergencies in over 13 languages.
Joining our long-term partners Greenhost, Qurium Media Foundation, and Tierra Común are the following:
- DefendDefenders focuses on strengthening the work of human rights defenders in Africa—specifically the East and Horn of Africa
- eQualitie provides the Deflect service, a robust website protection infrastructure designed to withstand distributed denial of service attacks
- Localization Lab translates free and open source software and resources to strengthen digital inclusion, safety, and free expression
- Nothing2Hide provides capacity building and security assistance to civil society activists, human rights defenders, and journalists around the globe
- 0xche strengthens the cybersecurity of activist and civil society organizations in Latin America
- Security Matters Asia advances digital security for at-risk communities across Southeast Asia
- Spirula provides at-risk organizations and individuals with integrated technology solutions for automating and securely scaling their operations
How to Apply to the Rapid Response Fund
If you’re seeking support services, please contact one of our community partners directly, at any time. You can find their contact information on our Rapid Response Fund page.
For direct financial support: please complete this simple online form.
We accept applications on a rolling basis—there are no deadlines—and we aim to respond to applicants within 5 days.
Learn more about all of our partners and how to apply for Rapid Response funding.