Volunteer for the FSF and GNU — Free Software Foundation — Working together for free software
Skip to content
or
skip to search
You
are here:
Volunteer
Info
Volunteer for the FSF and GNU
by
Free Software Foundation
Contributions
Published on
Mar 22, 2006 03:10 PM
Volunteers are key to the success
of projects organized by the Free Software Foundation and the GNU
Project. An important part of our role at the FSF is
coordination of volunteers. People write to us to say they want to help, and we connect them with tasks that need to be done, projects that need contributors, and ideas that could be developed.
Read this page in
Spanish
We also collect the ideas that people
send to us for new projects, resources, and campaigns. Send your ideas to us at
info@fsf.org
and we
will consider integrating it with this list.
Additionally, we offer unpaid internship positions throughout the year.
Read more about how to apply for FSF internships.
Are you an activist, or an organizer?
Join
the FSF community team!
Join our campaigns and take direct action now,
head over to our
campaigns center.
Connect your free software user group with the FSF.
Write to us at
info@fsf.org
Attend local free software events and government hearings.
We post these events either at
, or at
and share them with the Free Software Supporters mailing list. Write
to us at
info@fsf.org
if you see an event you'd like to attend on
behalf of the FSF.
Organize in your state, region or
country,
and connect to other free software activists at
. Get started by
listing your free software activism group
. Help us plan and have a presence at
events you organize. Write to us at
info@fsf.org
for materials.
Organize member events on behalf of the FSF,
either
independently or in connection with an existing event. We will be
happy to recommend speakers and provide materials and some helpful
instructions for how to do it effectively. Contact us at
membership@fsf.org
with some basic information about the size and
kind of event you want to have.
Visit schools and universities in your area and tell the students what free software is all about.
Add your name, availability, and expertise to the
list of teaching volunteers on the LibrePlanet wiki
and email your contact details to
info@fsf.org
and we're happy to connect you with teachers and professors in your area. Feel free to use the
teaching materials
on the wiki and upload your own materials to share them with other activists.
Are you a writer, a ranter, a thinker, a politically minded individual?
Write a free software blog.
We will be publishing blog entries from people
in the community at
. Please let us know
about free software issues that are going on in your local
community. Is your school requiring the use of proprietary
software in order to complete coursework? Do you help people in
your town convert their systems to free software? Send your
entries to
info@fsf.org
Write for our
Free Software Bulletin
Twice a year, we publish a
printed
with articles of long-term interest to our
supporters. Much of it is written by FSF staff and board members, but we welcome
outside contributions as well. Send your article or article
proposal to
info@fsf.org
Help post speech videos on audio-video.gnu.org.
If you want to volunteer to do this, please write to
campaigns@fsf.org
Set an example by switching to a *completely*
free software
operating system.
The easiest way to do that is to install and use one of the
free GNU/Linux distributions
Are you local?
The FSF is always in need of some help around the office. If you are in the Boston area and want to help out, we'd love to have you come by. Learn more about volunteer office tasks at
the LibrePlanet wiki page
Stuff envelopes
. Sometimes we do mailings, and we have to stuff a
lot of envelopes. If you are in the Boston area and want to be
available on-call for this exciting work, let us know at
info@fsf.org
Are you a news junkie, a professional web surfer?
Be an Issue Coordinator.
Choose one of the issues that the FSF
focuses on or should focus on and follow it closely over time. If
you have a sustained interest in an area such as DRM, Treacherous
Computing or Free BIOS and would like to be responsible for
coordinating news gathering and posting on this topic, let us
know at
info@fsf.org
Send us links to and summaries of news stories you read
about that
are related to free software. We do our best to monitor all of the
relevant news, but in the end we depend on people to write to us
and let us know that something we should be concerned about is
brewing. If you hear about something, let us know at
info@fsf.org
Are you a hacker?
Volunteer with the FSF Tech Team
. Help maintain and improve web sites, services, virtual machines or a some free software software packages like LibreJS. See
for information.
Contribute to the GNU Project.
Check out the
many ways to contribute directly to the GNU Project
, such hacking, web mastering, administering
Savannah
, and various sorts of organizational work.
Help with projects on our
High Priority Projects
list.
These are
not always GNU projects, but they are always projects that are
important to the free software world, often because they do
something that replaces a prominent proprietary program.
Are you a GNU/Linux user?
Respects Your Freedom
certification
program, or our
other
hardware resources
Send us a testimonial
describing how you use free software in your
business or personal life. We post them at
. You can send them to
testimonial@fsf.org
Contribute to the Free Software Directory
. We have over 16,000
packages listed in the
Directory
already, but there are plenty
more that we don't know about yet, and sometimes the entries that
we do have fall out of date or have errors. Read the
full instructions
for how to help.
Volunteer as a “Freedom Verifier” to check whether a given distribution contains only free software, so it can be included on the
list of free distributions
Are you multilingual?
Be a Translator
. To help make our pages accessible to all languages, please read
, join
, and contact
info@fsf.org
if you are willing to help.
Are you a designer?
Contribute graphics and design ideas.
We are always looking for
new logos and graphics to use on our web pages, in our printed
materials, and for t-shirts and other items for sale in
our shop
. A recent example is the logo for the GPLv3 process,
which was designed by a volunteer. If the graphics are smaller than 2 MB, you
can send them right to us, otherwise please send a link to
info@fsf.org
. Here are some
suggestions for future products that might inspire you.
Are you a law geek?
Be a Licensing Volunteer
. Help us answer the many questions we
receive every day at the FSF regarding the use and abuse of free
software licenses. If you are interested, write to
licensing@fsf.org
and tell us a bit
about your background, both legal and with the free software community. Please also run through the
GPL quiz
and let us know how you do.
Document Actions
Share on social networks
Syndicate:
News
Events
Blogs
Jobs
GNU
1PC9aZC4hNX2rmmrt7uHTfYAS3hRbph4UN
News
Job opportunity: Engineering and Certification Manager at the Free Software Foundation
Mar 10, 2026
The FSF announces global call for FSF's LibreLocal 2026 meetups
Feb 24, 2026
Eko K. A. Owen joins the FSF board as the union staff pick
Dec 29, 2025
More news…
Recent blogs
RAIL: Nonfree and unethical
You cannot use the GNU (A)GPL to take software freedom away
Relicensing versus license compatibility
March GNU Spotlight with Amin Bandali featuring eighteen new GNU releases: Autoconf, PSPP, and more!
Recent blogs -
More…
Upcoming Events
Free Software Directory meeting on IRC: Friday, April 24, starting at 12:00 EDT (16:00 UTC)
Apr 24, 2026 12:00 PM - 03:00 PM
#fsf on libera.chat
LibreLocal meetup in Beijing, China
May 01, 2026 02:00 PM - 09:00 PM
META SPACE Coffee&Bar, Dong Sheng Yuan Gong Yu, Heqing St., Haidian District, Beijing
Previous events…
Upcoming events…
The FSF is a charity with a worldwide mission to advance software freedom —
learn about our history and work.
fsf.org is powered by:
Plone
Zope
Python
CiviCRM
HTML5