By Dan Fernelius · January 19, 2023

At ISRG, we often say, “as a nonprofit, 100% of our funding comes from charitable contributions.” But what does that actually look like? For nearly a decade, the vast majority of our funding has come from sponsorships—in fact, more than $17 million dollars has been donated to ISRG since 2015. Looking to the year ahead, we wanted to take a moment to thank our renewing sponsors who, quite literally, make our work possible: 

With us since the beginning

In 2015, the work ISRG set out to do was viewed by many as audacious, if not incredible. Back then, SSL/TLS was used by less than 40% of page loads. Getting a certificate was costly and complicated. Our aim was to make access to SSL certificates easy, free, and automated. That same year nineteen sponsors came on board to help us realize this mission. Today, seventeen of those sponsors and grantmakers have stayed on board every year! Now in their eighth year as a sponsor, Hostpoint has renewed their support for 2023. Their Co-founder and CEO, Markus Gebert, commented: 

“We have supported Let’s Encrypt since the very beginning. It is very valuable and important that nowadays any website can be equipped with an SSL certificate free of charge.”

Our thanks to Akamai, Cisco, Mozilla, Google, OVHcloud, Internet Society, Shopify, Hostpoint, SiteGround, Cyon, IdenTrust, Vultr, Automattic, Electronic Frontier Foundation, infomaniak, PlanetHoster, and Discourse for their eight years of support.

Committed to a better Internet

We know that finding sponsorship dollars is often anything but a straightforward path. That’s why we approach sponsorship as an ongoing conversation, not a one-time transactional interaction. As a result, we’re proud that each year we see on average 80% of our sponsors renew their support. From large organizations with thousands of staff to one-person shops, our sponsors come in all shapes and sizes—but all share a common goal of helping to make our work happen. 

We are grateful to the 70 sponsors renewing their support for 2023 who combined provide close to 60% of our operating budget. Their continued support means we begin 2023 well on our way towards our fundraising need for the year. Shopify, a sponsor since 2015 has renewed their Gold sponsorship for 2023. Their Founder and CEO, Tobi Lütke, commented:

“Let’s Encrypt makes it easy for everyone to do the right thing to secure the Internet. We couldn’t be happier to give our support to such a great effort.”

Together, these organizations make the mission of ISRG, and its impact for billions of people around the world, possible. Powered by their support, we look forward to continuing to build a Web that works for everyone, everywhere.

Supporting Let’s Encrypt

As a project of the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG), 100% of our funding comes from contributions from our community of users and supporters. We depend on their support in order to provide our public benefit services. If your company or organization would like to sponsor Let’s Encrypt please email us at sponsor@letsencrypt.org. If you can support us with a donation, we ask that you make an individual contribution.