Where your money actually helps

Where money actually helps

Four rules before you give

1. Registration. The organisation names a legal jurisdiction and a registration number you can look up.
2. Accounts. It publishes an annual report or audited accounts showing what proportion of income reaches programme work.
3. Named people. Its leadership and board are public. Anonymous leadership is normal for networks operating inside Iran, but those networks do not usually solicit public donations.
4. Payment channel. Bank transfer or a recognised payment processor. Crypto-only appeals, personal payment-app handles and donation requests arriving by direct message are the standard shape of fraud.

Support that is not money

Several of the most useful contributions cost nothing. They are also the ones that go undone.

• Adopt a prisoner. Learn one case, publish it repeatedly, and raise it by name with your representatives — templates are on the campaigns page.
• Translate. This archive exists in 41 languages because volunteers reported and fixed bad phrasing; the same work is needed at every monitoring organisation.
• Verify. Open-source investigators geolocate footage and timestamp events; the skill is learnable in weeks and permanently useful.
• Teach. A single classroom session reaches thirty people who did not know the record existed — free materials are on the teaching page.
• Host. Mirror this archive or any monitor's dataset; redundancy defeats takedowns.

If you have family inside Iran

Donations are traceable. People inside Iran have been prosecuted over foreign transfers to relatives, and diaspora donors have been threatened through family members still in the country. Give through established organisations rather than personal channels, keep no public record of what you gave and to whom, and do not discuss transfers on mainstream messaging platforms. The safety guidance on the solidarity page applies here in full.

Frequently asked questions

Does iranholocaust.org accept donations?

No. The archive is non-commercial and deliberately cheap to run: no advertising, no paywall, no sponsorship, no reader tracking. Keeping it unfunded keeps it uncapturable. Money is better directed to the monitors, legal-defence funds and connectivity projects listed on this page.

Which organisations are worth supporting?

The established documentation and defence organisations: Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO), HRANA and the Human Rights Activists in Iran network, the Center for Human Rights in Iran, the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, Amnesty International's Iran work, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders for imprisoned journalists, and circumvention projects that keep Iranians online during shutdowns.

How do I avoid donating to a scam?

Apply four tests: the organisation publishes audited accounts or an annual report; it has a verifiable legal registration in a named jurisdiction; it names its leadership publicly; and it does not solicit through cryptocurrency-only channels or direct messages. Appeals that combine urgency, anonymity and crypto-only payment should be assumed fraudulent.

Can I send money directly to families inside Iran?

It is legally and practically hazardous. Banking sanctions block most direct routes, informal transfer networks are monitored, and recipients of foreign funds have been prosecuted for “collaboration with hostile states”. Established organisations with existing in-country channels can move support far more safely than an individual can.

What can I give other than money?

Time and skills. Translation, legal research, digital-security training for diaspora activists, verification and geolocation work for open-source investigators, and sustained constituency pressure on your own representatives are all in short supply and cost nothing but hours.