Wau Holland Foundation

As part of their focus on moral courage, freedom-of-information and transparency initiatives, the foundation has supported individual "hunted whistle-blowers, journalists and (political) hacktivists." They have criticised the German government's attempts to censor the Open Knowledge Foundation's online platform FragDenStaat (English: Ask the State). The foundation also accepts donations in Europe to support WikiLeaks and previously Julian Assange's defense.

Whistleblowing

The foundation supports acts of "moral courage" (German: Zivilcourage) in the digital realm, and cooperates with different support funds / networks in this area, especially the Courage Foundation. Since 2024, they are a founding organisation, executive board member, and core funder, along with the Reva and David Logan Foundation and others, of the Berlin-based non-profit Whistleblower Network, which is responsible for overseeing the Ellsberg Whistleblower Award.

Relationship to WikiLeaks

The foundation processes donations in Europe to support the WikiLeaks organization and (from his arrest in April 2019 until his release in 2024) Julian Assange's defense, including funds raised through the AssangeDAO in 2022.

Between October 2009 when it began accepting donations on WikiLeaks' behalf and December 2010, the foundation collected over $1.9 million USD. On 4 December 2010, PayPal turned off donations in response to the foundation's connection to WikiLeaks, alleging that the account was being used for "activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity." On 8 December 2010 the foundation released a press statement, saying it has filed legal action against PayPal for blocking its account and for libel due to PayPal's allegations of "illegal activity."

In October 2022, the foundation sponsored a multi-week exhibition in Berlin, titled "NoisyLeaks! The Art of Exposing Secrets." With international contributions from artists, technologists, journalists, researchers, filmmakers and activists, including Ai Weiwei and !Mediengruppe Bitnik, the event featured a variety of artistic creations, films, presentations, and workshops related to "the historical and cultural heritage of WikiLeaks," as a retrospective on the impact of their releases.

The foundation has funded and/or collected donations on behalf of various free software projects, including the GNOME desktop environment, GnuPG, the p≡p foundation (also known as Sequoia-PGP), the Katzenpost mixnet protocol, and Tor network relay/server operators. They have also sponsored events / gatherings for free software developers to meet and collaborate, such as Decentralized Internet Federation Fusion (DIFF).