It never ceases to amaze me that many businesses and charities that purport to have ethical values as a core part of their mission take no time to think about the technology they use whilst carrying out that mission.
For some businesses, this might be so called “Ethical Theatre” where good intentions are performed loudly, but the technology underneath goes completely unquestioned.
Charities and CICs deserve more scrutiny still – they’re spending money typically given to them by donors who have an expectation their donation is spent wisely.
The Non-Profits
Whether it’s a globally renowned charity battling poverty, hunger or climate change, or a small local organisation trying to “do good” for a specific sector, the story is largely the same – they’ll typically be using computers running on Microsoft Windows or Apple MacOS to use services provided to them by Microsoft or Google.
Smaller charities whose primary focus is in a specific sector (your local cat sanctuary, or a group supporting special needs children) can be forgiven for not really considering the ethics of using a given tech firm’s services, but spending their donors’ money with large US tech firms is probably something they should at least pause and think about.
Larger charities though – or charities who are explicitly “ethical” – may be in need of a reality check.
Oxfam (https://www.oxfam.org.uk/)
If you visit the Oxfam UK web site you may have seen an urgent call to action to help Gaza and Palestine. “We must stand together in our call for accountability, justice and lasting peace” says Oxfam.
But Oxfam UK are using Microsoft 365 for their email hosting and it’s almost certain they’re using Microsoft Windows to connect to this service.
Many sources expose Microsoft’s ties with the Israeli military, with the IDF confirming they are at least in part dependent on the likes of Microsoft, Amazon and Google.
The Guardian, working with +972 Magazine and Local Call, revealed that Israeli military intelligence unit 8200 used Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to build a mass surveillance system, exploiting Azure’s “near-limitless storage capacity and computing power” to collect, store and play back millions of Palestinian phone calls a day. The investigation reported that this surveillance data helped shape Israeli military operations, including air strikes, in Gaza and the West Bank.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/12/microsoft-head-israel-step-down
That’s just one article, you’ll find others.
We wonder how many of the donations received by Oxfam were paid to Microsoft? Did Oxfam do their due diligence when they chose to use Microsoft software and services? Do Oxfam Trustees owe their donors an explanation?
The Climate Coalition (https://www.theclimatecoalition.org/)
The Climate Coalition have the stated aim of being a “global leader in tackling climate change and restoring nature” by 2030.
It’s a great message, but they’re using Google for their email hosting and it’s probable they’re using Microsoft Windows to connect to this service.
Google’s own 2024 Environmental Report at https://sustainability.google/reports/google-2024-environmental-report/ shows its greenhouse gas emissions have risen 48% since 2019, driven largely by the energy demands of AI data centres.
Google has also been accused of failing to properly enforce its own 2021 pledge to demonetise YouTube videos containing climate disinformation with independent research finding that only a small fraction of flagged videos, out of tens of millions of views, were ever actually demonetised. (See https://caad.info/analysis/reports/youtubes-climate-denial-dollars-2/)
To be fair to these two charities, we think it’s likely this is a lack of understanding during the selection of their technology stack rather than hypocrisy, but the point is moot.
Smaller Charities
It’s not just the big charities. We pulled information about the email servers for every active charity registered in the UK that we could find domain name data for to see who’s actually hosting their email.
Of the ones we looked at (and that is by no means all of them) we found that over 26,000 are using Microsoft and over 15,000 are using Google. That’s over 40% of the charities we surveyed routing their communications through one of two US tech giants, and that’s before you look any closer.
Around 40,000 came back as using other services, but while many of these are genuinely hosting email away from the big two, a good number are likely filtering through an anti spam gateway before relaying email on to a Microsoft or Google mailbox anyway.
If you donate to one of these charities, wouldn’t you want to know your money isn’t going to large US tech firms? Perhaps you’d rather see those charities paying for tech services delivered from the UK, or our European neighbours.
So, what’s the problem?
The problems are numerous – escalating costs, services you’re locked in to, planned obsolescence, data exploitation, lack of true privacy, planetary heating and the impact on the economy as a whole.
Learn more about the problem here.
So, what can be done?
We’ve developed the Four Pillars of Ethical Computing and it’s our stated aim to help organisations adopt IT infrastructure in a way that serves users and communities instead of the billionaire class. These are:
- Open Source Software
- Private & Secure Data
- Sustainable Hardware & Services
- Social Responsibility
Our vision is technology that truly works for people: protecting privacy, respecting autonomy, and strengthening local economies.
It’s against this background that we’ve spent the summer of 2026 putting together a stack of well respected open source applications into our Ethical Computing Package.
The package takes well established open-source, privacy respecting IT services and melds them into a single platform that works in much the same way as Microsoft or Google services – but with much less baggage and delivered by UK based organisations.
By the end of this quarter, we’ll be in a position to offer the early private cloud package to a small, handpicked group of businesses and non-profits. The service opens up fully (including the on-premise version) in 2027.
Oxfam and The Climate Coalition were contacted for comment shortly after this article was published. Aany response will be added here.