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Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Amy2, who volunteers on the Development & Membership committee as a Chair and Premiums Specialist.
How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?
I’m Co-Chair of Development & Membership (DevMem), which is the committee that makes sure the OTW has enough money to run all of its projects. Primarily we do this through the membership drives in April and October.
I’m also our Premiums Specialist, which means I order and then ship out most of our donation gifts; either by sending them to the donor directly, or by relaying them in batches through our Midshipmen (regional volunteers who are able to mail gifts out locally, saving us a lot of money in international postage). Last Drive, about a quarter of all individual donations came with a gift request, and about 2/3rds of the total amount donated was put towards a gift!
What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?
It depends on the time of year! DevMem’s weekly tasks are things like keeping an eye on our inbox (we take turns signing up for shifts), answering donor questions, making sure our donor database is doing what we want it to do, and keeping the donation form and FAQs updated.
My regular weekly mission is to reach out to people who have hit the goal they set for their recurring donation gift. For those who aren’t familiar, when you sign up to make a monthly recurring donation, you can request that we send you a gift when you reach a certain total. For example, if you set up a $25 monthly donation and request a mug, we will send one to you in ten months when you hit $250. Because it can be a long time before you reach your goal—shout out to the person who finally got the discontinued tumbler we’d been saving for them, after donating $10/year for 8 years!—we send out an email first asking recipients to confirm their current addresses. Sometimes I have to email multiple times to get a response. We have a Naughty List of people who have ignored the first six messages or so, and we email blast that one every few months as well. If you’re on it, You Know Who You Are. Please email me back ☹
Once a month, a Membership Data Specialist pulls the list of people who requested donation gifts the previous month, and I get those sent out. It ranges from a few dozen to a few thousand items, depending on how recent Drive was. My typical weeks after Drive are spent packaging gifts, listening to audiobooks, and, sometimes, leaving candy out for my local postal workers so they don’t hate me.
I also track the returned gifts, and a small and wonderful team of DevMem volunteers reaches out to donors to get updated information so that we can resend them. (In case any readers need to hear this, a lot of times the post office will not deliver to your pen name. Please be sure you can receive mail under the name you give us, or else it comes back with an “I don’t know them” sticker on it and we have to use your donation to pay shipping twice.)
I am very motivated to do this because the returns live on my desk, otherwise I will forget about them. And when someone requests a recurring donation gift, we put it in a literal bin of non-infinite space called “the Hope Chest” which is, at the time of writing, on my literal floor with a dozen of its friends. (The other bins have names such as “McShip,” “The Novak”, and “Party Rock Anthem”. Five points if you can guess what’s in them.)
TL;DR: we want to send you your stuff! Please help us do that! Maybe check your spam folders!
What made you decide to volunteer?
I joined DevMem in 2018 as a graphic designer, because I liked art and fanfiction and thought it sounded like fun. Graphics is still one of my roles (the playing cards and butterfly pin are my babies) though I’m thrilled that DevMem has had an actual four-person design team the last couple years–October’s sticker set is a collaboration between them! I became a Membership Data Specialist not too long after joining because tributes were needed and I thought knowing how CRMs work might be useful.
I took on the Co-Chair and shipping roles a couple years back, when the person who had held both roles for the last 10 years(!) retired. Her name is also Amy, so I seemed like the most reasonable choice to maintain continuity with our vendors. (I kid: my real qualification was being a Data Specialist with access to a shed.)
Also, in the interests of honesty…I was delighted to have the chance to answer the question “what work do you do for AO3?” with “I’m in charge of shipping.”
What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?
Other people have said really insightful things on other 5 Things posts, so I’m going to go with an extremely silly challenge that I’m pretty sure is unique to me as an OTW problem: I have, in my Shipping career, acquired two free disassembled sheds of questionable integrity that did not come with instructions. Some very tolerant loved ones (who were as uninterested in sharing our living space with bulk orders of OTW merch as I was) spent many hours helping me assemble them, using a combination of our wits and online manuals for similar-but-not-identical sheds. I am not an engineer, a carpenter, or even particularly good at puzzles. I did not think signing up to make Drive banners in 2018 would lead to climbing a tree in 2024 to install a tarp, having given up on keeping the shed’s original roof.
What fannish things do you like to do?
Mostly at this point I do fanbinding. I manage to actually write about one fic a year. But really what I do is put AO3 pins in padded envelopes when I should be working, typeset fics to bind when I should be putting AO3 pins in padded envelopes, and read fanfiction on my phone when I should be sleeping.
Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out previous Five Things posts.
The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.