Both personally and through my business I support a number of businesses and organisations that I like and admire. Sometimes this is through donations or sponsorship, and sometimes this is through paying for products that they make.
I list them here so that you can try them out and support them too, and to inspire and encourage you to use your money to say you appreciate peoples’ work and the value they create, and to make the things you love sustainable.
People and projects
- Zuzana Kunckova – for her important work on the inclusive Larabelles community.
- Caleb Porzio – for Livewire, AlpineJS and everything else
- John Blackbourn – who makes free tools and plugins for WordPress that I use a LOT
- A Big Orange Heart (was WP&UP) – Dan and the team’s work on mental health for remote workers seems so needed and valuable
Products and companies
- Tweetbot – The best Twitter client for MacOS and iOS, I’m more than happy to pay for it.
- Bear Notes – The best Notes app for MacOS and iOS which I’m also more than happy to pay for.
- I support good journalism by paying for a digital subscription to The Guardian.
- Laravel Spark/Nova/Forge – supporting Taylor Otwell developing Laravel through use of his products
- Statamic – new websites are coming based on the brilliant CMS from Jack McDade and his team
- Amanda Appiagyei curates a community of people developing their personal brands. She runs occasional challenge weeks that have been hugely valuable to me. I bought her Trello Templates to support her (but they’re also really good a a great way to learn some advanced Trello!)
- Darkroom Espresso is a local coffee shop run by my friend Steve. Steve is humble, brave, friendly and an awesome barista. And he lets me work from his place a lot. I really want his business to thrive so I buy coffee and supplies from him whenever I can.
- Pinboard.in – wonderful, simple bookmarking platform with a great API. Still can’t believe the guy went and bought Delicious!
Previous support
My donations and subscriptions get reviewed from time to time. Here are some people and things that I used to support and that you may want to…
- WorkNotes and the Independent Work community – because Dave Smyth does such great work here
- Doing It for the Kids – to thank Frankie for the huge amount of work she puts into curating this community of freelancing parents
- Micro.blog – I did the Kickstarter for Manton’s IndieWeb Micro.blog project and had a paid account for a long time. It’s a great little platform and I love the concept behind it, but it never really got traction with me. Perhaps I’ll be back one day.
- Smashing Magazine – I supported Smashing Magazine for a long while as a member. But I’m off exploring other lands now. Membership is still worthwhile and recommended if you’re more design-focussed than I am. But the content isn’t for me right now
Finally, if I’ve helped you in some way and you want to support ME then you can buy me a coffee – it will genuinely put a smile on my face! Thanks!