For two decades, OpenCourseWare (OCW) has been sharing MIT teaching materials with the world, for free. In that time, OCW has become a robust free educational resource thousands of people rely on every day to improve their knowledge, circumstances, and communities. As we plan for the future, we are investing in a more accessible platform, so that OCW might support even more learners, wherever they are.
It’s taken a community to make the first 20 years of OCW possible. Now we’re looking toward our community to come together again to help us lay the foundation for what comes next. Every gift made during our 20th anniversary campaign will help us deliver on our mission to freely share teaching materials and resources from MIT with the world, through a more accessible OpenCourseWare for the future. Support OCW with a gift today.
MIT is committed to openly sharing course material on OpenCourseWare, free of charge. While OCW is free for anyone to access and use, it is not without cost to maintain and publish MIT course content on our site. Support from the Institute provides about half of OCW’s budget, and the remainder is provided by the generosity of donors like you, who donate to OCW with a median gift of $25. Gifts directly help OCW distribute, collect, digitize, and address copyright issues in faculty materials before they can be published.
As we invest in new ways of reaching learners through video, social media, and podcasting, and work to develop a more modern OCW platform to better meet learners’ needs, donations to OCW will be more important than ever in ensuring the sustainability of our work. Gifts also enable OCW to provide local copies of the OCW site to participating schools, universities, and organizations in bandwidth-constrained regions.
Above all, your gift to OCW demonstrates a commitment to knowledge as a universal public good.
Each course we publish requires an average of 100 hours of effort to produce, and OCW typically publishes materials from 60 courses on our site each year. In addition to MIT faculty, behind OCW is a dedicated team of about 20 publication specialists, intellectual property managers, web and technical production managers, video editors, and administrators who work directly with faculty to collect and compile course materials, ensure proper licensing for open sharing, format materials for our site, and manage OCW’s communications, outreach, and operations. OCW sustains a considerable technical infrastructure to manage content and distribute it through a worldwide network to our global audience. Supporting rich media, such as our very popular video content, can be especially costly.
MIT Gift Operations
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* Please note: due to staffing changes on campus in response to the Covid-19 crisis, we encourage you to make your gift online if possible.
For questions, or to learn about other ways to give, please email ol-giving@mit.edu.
Yes, you can choose to renew your gift automatically on a monthly or annual basis by setting up a recurring gift through our secure web form. Recurring gifts can be set up for any amount and help OCW plan for the future.
Yes! MIT is a 501(c)(3) institution, and your gift is tax-deductible within the limitations of U.S. federal income tax laws. Our tax identification number is 04-2103594. You will receive a receipt for tax purposes after making your gift.
Yes, you can double your impact when your employer matches your gift to OCW. To find out whether your company has a matching gift policy with us, please visit the MIT matching gifts page. Then make your donation to OCW.
During our 2019-2020 year, over 1,500 supporters, including more than 100 OCW sustainers, gave to OCW from 83 countries and 6 continents, making a median gift of $25. Meet our supporters.
Your donations are vital to OCW, but financial support isn't the only way you can contribute to our work:
We welcome you to demonstrate your company's commitment to unlocking knowledge by providing major support for OCW. Through our Flagship and Leadership sponsor programs, your company will be acknowledged on our home page or main course list page as an organization committed to improving education around the world.
You will be providing visible support for a program that serves millions of visitors a month and has been recognized on the front page of The New York Times and Washington Post, in magazines such as US News & World Report and Forbes, and in thousands of other media outlets worldwide. Major sponsorship opportunities begin at $100,000 USD.
For more information on OCW corporate sponsorship opportunities, please contact Yvonne Ng, Annual Giving Manager, yng [at] mit.edu.
No one better captures the impact OCW has on the world than the thousands of learners who use OCW each day, a vibrant community of university and high school students, educators, and independent and lifelong learners from all over the world. To hear their stories, we invite you to read a compilation of some of the inspirational feedback we've received over the years.
To learn more about MIT OpenCourseWare's impact, read the latest report.
