Archive of Our Own ^beta

The Organization for Transformative Works's (OTW) October membership drive is over and we are delighted to say that we are finishing with a total of US$288,692.28 raised. We are particularly pleased that 7,339 donors chose to either take up or renew OTW membership with their donation, exceeding our goal of 4,500 members.

These donations came from 8,753 people in 79 countries: thank you to every single one of them, as well as to all of you who posted and shared the news about the drive! The OTW would not exist without its users all around the world, and your continued support for us is our absolute pride and joy! We are so glad to know that our ongoing mission to support, protect, and provide access to the history of fanworks and fan culture continues to resonate with the people that matter most of all: the fans themselves.

If you were intending to donate or join and haven't yet done so, don't worry! The OTW accepts donations all year round and you can always choose to become a member with a donation of US$10 or more. Memberships run for one calendar year from the date of your donation, so if you donate now you'll be able to vote in the 2026 OTW Board elections, which will take place in August. And our exclusive thank-you gifts are available whenever you donate!

Thanks again to our donors, our volunteers, and everyone who supports the OTW and its projects. We can't wait to see what milestones we hit in the future.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

AO3 continues to grow and pass new milestones. This year alone, we celebrated having nine million users, one million Mandarin Chinese fanworks, and 15 million fanworks—have you ever wondered how we keep up behind the scenes?

One of the places your generous donations go to is our Systems committee, who have been hard at work upgrading the servers that power AO3’s database and search systems, to keep up with the ever increasing amount of users and activity.

Systems maintains the infrastructure to support the OTW's projects, as well as internal systems. This includes our three server racks, numerous servers, and networking equipment, which can be seen below. Our all volunteer team regularly monitors our servers and responds to outages as quickly as possible to restore service, in addition to performing routine upgrades and maintenance to ensure the OTW's projects remain available. They also occasionally publish postmortems and presentations about AO3’s infrastructure on their AO3_Systems AO3 account.

We’ve prepared various donation gifts for this Drive as well! As usual, we have our US$45 sticker set. At the US$75 level, we have this year’s pin (the AO3 logo in disguise as a butterfly!) and a new spinning keychain with the AO3 and OTW logos. This month, we have also replaced our old duffel bag with a water bottle + pin combo.

If you want a gift but don’t want to donate all at once, you can also set up a recurring donation and save towards the gift of your choice. Simply select the gift you prefer on the donation form, and if you choose to not donate for the gift in one sitting, it will automatically get set up as a recurring donation. Those of you in the U.S. might also be able to double your contribution via employer matching: contact your HR department to find out if this is an option for you.

A donation of US$10 or more will also allow you to become a member of the OTW. OTW members have the right to vote for the Board of Directors—the OTW’s governing board. You have until June 30, 2026, to become a member if you would like to vote in next year’s election, which will be held in August of next year.

While we hope that many of you will take this opportunity to donate and join the OTW, we're grateful for the support of all members of this community, in all its many forms! Whether you create, share, comment on or kudos fanworks on AO3; edit Fanlore; read Transformative Works and Cultures; or spread information from OTW Legal, you all help shape the OTW and its projects every day. We are grateful for your time, energy, and engagement!

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Our October Membership Drive has ended, and we are glad to announce that we have added 6,113 members in the last few days! Contributions have been made from 74 countries for a total of US$192,743.11.

Although the membership drive has ended for now, you can still become a member at any time of year. And by joining before June 30, 2024 at 23:59 UTC you will be eligible to vote in our annual OTW Board of Directors elections in August next year.

As our Development & Membership team is already hard at work mailing out your thank-you gifts, we want to say how meaningful your support has been for the many years we’ve been here, whether financial, through volunteering, or by sending us encouragement. This year has brought unexpected difficulties, but we’re glad to have come through it together.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

After the Archive of Our Own (AO3), Fanlore, and our donation form went down due to the DDoS attacks in July, many fans responded by donating in the following months. We greatly appreciate both your generosity and your desire to respond to the attacks with this show of support. We received a 35% bump in donations in July and August of 2023 compared to July and August in 2022.

That's why, during our usual October membership drive, we want to encourage you to become a member of the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) — the nonprofit organization behind AO3 and Fanlore, among other projects — and continue to be involved. Our drive donation banner on AO3 will thus be tracking new members and not money raised.

What is OTW membership?

You can become an OTW member with a donation of US$10 or more. Membership will allow you to vote for candidates seeking to join the Board of Directors—the OTW's governing board. You have until June 30, 2024 to become a member if you would like to vote in next year's election, which will be held in August.

• In order to become a member, you must select "Yes" to the question at the end of the donation form.
• You cannot become a member by donating US$1 ten times: it must be at least US$10 in a single donation.
• While employer matching cannot be used for membership, fans in the U.S. might be able to double their contributions that way. (Contact your HR department to find out if this is an option for you!)

Being an OTW member is not the same as having an AO3 account.

Your OTW membership has no connection to any account you may have at AO3 or any of our other projects, and an OTW membership does not provide access to any online space. This was a deliberate choice made by the OTW early on, to ensure that your reading history, works you've created, and edits you've made on Fanlore aren't tied to your wallet name or payment information.

But besides being able to vote in the OTW Board elections, you get cool merchandise if you've been a member for multiple consecutive years.

And speaking of cool merchandise, here are some new thank-you gifts that donors can receive:

AO3 pin is 1.5 inches/3.81 centimeters long

Contracted Unified English Braille sticker reading "I [heart] my fandoms" is 3 inches by 2.5 inches/7.62 by 6.35 centimeters

These thank-you gifts start at US$40. You can also set up a recurring donation and save towards the gift of your choice. Instructions on how to set this up will be included in your donation receipt.

Find out more

If you have any questions about membership and donation, either check out our FAQ or contact Development & Membership.

We appreciate all your donations, volunteering, encouraging messages and fun memes. And for those who would like to help spread the word about our membership drive, use #otwmembers in your posts! That will help us spot your messages and signal boost.

Thanks for your support and we hope to have more of you join us!

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

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 Amy Lowell, who volunteers as a co-chair and premiums specialist for our Development & Membership committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I am the co-chair of the Development and Membership committee as well as the Premiums Specialist. As a member of the Development and Membership committee, I help conduct the fundraisers that pay for all of the things that make the OTW and its projects run. As premiums specialist, I am responsible for ordering, maintaining, and shipping all donor thank-you gifts. I also help coordinate giveaways and display items for conventions where OTW has a presence.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

I don’t have typical weeks, since what I do varies so much by the time of the year. Outside of the drives, I usually will answer donor questions, send out thank-you gifts to donors, plan and prepare for upcoming drives, and look for new items and vendors for new thank-you gifts.

During the drive, our committee is constantly monitoring incoming donations and answering questions, and I am also monitoring thank-you gift requests so that I can get ahead of items that need to be reordered to fulfill donor requests. Then after the drive I work to get all of the thank-you gifts out to the donors. Luckily, I have an amazing shipper in Europe who handles shipping to that area, but we can have 4,000+ thank-you gifts that need to be packed, labeled, and shipped, so in the weeks after the drive I pretty much do nothing else.

What made you decide to volunteer?

Way back when, I was a vidder who had many videos purged, so when I heard about OTW’s preservation work, I was intrigued and started to look into the organization. Learning that it was an ALL volunteer organization made up of people who just really cared, not people getting paid, I decided to volunteer.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

Time zones. Having an organization whose members span around the world makes for some unconventional meeting times. Other than that, probably just fitting in my paying job and family during those weeks surrounding the drive when there is so much work to get done in a short amount of time.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I read a lot, but mostly my whole family is pretty much a bunch of fandom nerds, and I do a lot of fandom-related crafting. We have several Christmas trees dedicated to different fandoms. I make a lot of cosplay costumes; many fandom inspired blankets, amigurumi, and accessories; and most recently made my youngest son’s furniture look like Minecraft items.

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 earlier 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, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works's April membership drive is over and we are delighted to say that we are finishing with a total of US$252,343.98 raised, far exceeding our goal of US$50,000. These donations came from 7852 people in 71 countries: thank you to every single one of them, as well as to all of you who posted and shared the news about the drive!

We are particularly pleased that 6450 of donors chose to take up or renew OTW membership with their donation. The OTW would not exist without its users all around the world, and your continued support for us is our absolute pride and joy! We are so glad to know that our ongoing mission to support, protect, and provide access to the history of fanworks and fan culture continues to resonate with the people that matter most of all: the fans themselves.

If you were intending to donate or join and haven't yet done so, don't worry! The OTW accepts donations all year round and you can always choose to become a member with a donation of US$10 or more. Memberships run for one calendar year from the date of your donation, so if you donate now you'll be able to vote in the 2023 OTW Board elections, which will take place in August. And our exclusive thank-you gifts are available whenever you donate!

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

It’s that time of year again – time for the biannual OTW membership drive! Ever since it was founded in 2007, the Organization for Transformative Works has relied on the support of fans like you. This support comes in the form of volunteer hours as well as the incredible generosity of our donors and our members. Find out more about how your donations have contributed to our work this year by checking out our budget post and, if you’re able to, click through to donate today.

We’re excited to have a great new slate of donor thank-you gifts this year including a travel tumbler showcasing the OTW project logos and a sticker set featuring the AO3 work symbols so that you can properly label your friends, pets, and household items. Of course, our wildly popular trope cards are still available, as are a number of other exciting gifts.

These thank-you gifts start at US$40; you can also set up a recurring donation and save towards the gift of your choice. Instructions on how to set this up will be included in your donation receipt. Those of you in the U.S. might also be able to double your contribution via employer matching: contact your HR department to find out if this is an option for you.

It’s also worth remembering that a donation of US$10 or more will allow you to become a member of the OTW. OTW members receive a special social media icon and, more importantly, the right to vote for the Board of Directors — the OTW’s governing board. You have until June 30, 2023 to become a member if you would like to vote in this year’s election, which will be held in August.

While we hope that many of you will take this opportunity to donate and join the OTW, we're grateful for the support of all members of this community, in all its many forms! Whether you create, share, comment on or kudos fanworks on AO3; edit Fanlore; read Transformative Works and Cultures; or spread information from OTW Legal, you all help shape the OTW and its projects every day. We are grateful for your time, energy, and engagement!

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works' April membership drive is over and we are delighted to say that we exceeded our fundraising target of US$40,000, with a final total of US$275,724.51 donated by 7,528 people in 84 countries. We are particularly pleased that 5,810 donors chose to renew or begin OTW membership.

Thank you so much to everybody in our global community who shared, posted about, or donated during the drive. Your support underpins our ongoing mission: to serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture, in all its myriad forms. We’re glad that this is as important to you as it is to us.

And if you're just now hearing about the drive - don't worry! The OTW accepts donations all year round, and all of our membership perks and thank-you gifts are available whenever you donate.