Trestle Education Fund

Organizations rallying to protect and defend the rights of immigrants, asylum seekers and migrants in our country are facing a unique scale of digital threat.   We’ve seen an unprecedented wave of digital attacks across civic, political, and social change organizations — and small groups who advocate for and directly support immigrant communities are at heightened risk.  Bad actors are using various dark methods to undermine these organizations’ ability to deliver services, take legal action, and advocate for better immigration policies. We’re seeing attempts at websites and mobile app hacks, extracting beneficiaries’ privacy by exfiltrating personally identifiable information from databases, and a rising fear of government intrusion — all of which erode community trust during a very volatile time. People’s livelihoods and physical safety are at stake. While these groups are leaders in the communities fighting against the sea change of attitudes and policies that threaten immigrants in our country, they are often underfunded and unfamiliar with the steps needed to keep their systems, data and people digitally safe.  These vulnerabilities are undermining our capacity to protect and defend immigrant communities — this is an urgent problem that needs intervention right now. A digital security program for immigration justice   We’re piloting an initial fund to shield up to 20 immigration-focused projects . We plan to raise about $250,000 to shore up the digital security of 15-20 security immigration organizations. Each security improvement project is expected to cost around $10,000. Trestle Collaborative works with small non-profits to protect their computer systems (websites, online data storage, and applications) and any sensitive information they retain regarding employees, stakeholders, and their communities. This enables organizations on the frontlines able to keep focused on their critical work while building up a stronger digital security. 

In this moment, when our reproductive freedoms have come under attack, organizations providing services to people who seek reproductive care have become critical bedrocks for millions of Americans. These groups face scrutiny, demand and a need to scale like never before. Technology often lies at the core of how they can better serve this growing demand, but they are stretched very thin — and so are their budgets. Trestle is raising funds to ensure that safe, secure and humane technology is available to everyone fighting for reproductive rights. We are working to bring in $50,000 by the end of 2023 so that a few critical abortion-access projects reach completion. Your donations go directly to covering the costs of Trestle's teams of technologists working in lock step with leaders on the ground to build websites, hotlines and data systems that put safety and access at the forefront. ~~ Trestle is on a mission is to make sure that tech is never a barrier to those fighting for social change. We are a women and BIPOC-led non-profit that has worked on 65+ critical social change initiatives and provided $2.6+ million in free services to those leading on the frontlines of change. Millions of voters and tens of thousands of volunteers have been reached by organizing technology that we have supported. We are lucky enough to have worked with over 55+ state and national organizations, including The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, Reproductive Equity Now, If/When/How, Run for Something, Indian American Impact, Swing Left and the Sunrise Movement.