Dream World of Slash

Posted by therealmorticia

https://www.transformativeworks.org/otw-finance-2026-budget-update/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=286984

Through the last year, the OTW Finance team has continued to ensure that the organization’s bills are paid, tax returns filed, and standard accounting procedures met. The 2025 audit of financial statements has been issued, with the 2025 tax return to be finalized by the end of October!

The team has also been diligently working to meet the OTW’s 2026 needs, and is proud to present to you this year’s budget update (access the 2026 budget update spreadsheet for more detailed information):

2026 Expenses

Archive of Our Own (AO3)

• US$320,130.90 spent so far out of US$688,635.38 total this year, as of September 30, 2026.
• 66.1% of the OTW’s expenses go towards maintaining AO3. This includes the bulk of our server expenses—both new purchases and ongoing colocation and maintenance—website performance monitoring tools, and various systems-related licenses, as well as costs highlighted below (access all program expenses).
• This year’s budgeted AO3 expenses also include US$350,000 to purchase new database servers, in addition to the $60,000 for new servers and $56,000 for new firewalls already spent to increase the capacity of existing servers to handle expected site traffic growth through the year.

Open Doors

• US$5,410.90 spent so far out of US$8,077.96 total this year, as of September 30, 2026.
• Open Doors’ expenses consist of hosting, backup, and domain costs for imported fanwork archives, as well as an allocated share of various OTW-wide productivity tools (access all program expenses).

Transformative Works and Cultures

• US$5,682.98 spent so far out of US$7,220.54 total this year, as of September 30, 2026.
• Transformative Works and Cultures‘ expenses are the journal’s website hosting, publishing, and storage fees, as well as an allocated share of various OTW-wide productivity tools (access all program expenses).
• Additionally, in 2024, the University of Amsterdam provided €1,000 (US$1,061) to Transformative Works and Cultures, which will be used to help fund the Fans of Color Research Prize. One prize has awarded in 2025 and 2026 each.

Fanlore

• US$15,671.43 spent so far out of US$37,114.64 total this year, as of September 30, 2026.
• Fanlore’s expenses are its share of allocated server hardware, maintenance and colocation costs, as well as its portion of various OTW-wide productivity tools (access all program expenses).

Legal Advocacy

• US$355.47spent so far out of US$2,927.92 total this year, as of September 30, 2026.
• Legal’s expenses consist of registration fees for conferences and hearings and funds set aside for legal filings if necessary, as well as an allocated share of OTW-wide productivity tools (access all program expenses).

Fundraising and Development

• US$105,217.07 spent so far out of US$140,259.28 total this year, as of September 30, 2026.
• Our fundraising and development expenses consist of transaction fees charged by our third-party payment processors for each donation, thank-you gift purchases and shipping, outreach work by volunteers at various fan conventions, and the tools used to host the OTW’s membership database and track communications with donors and potential donors, as well as an allocated share of OTW-wide productivity tools (access fundraising expenses).

Administration

• US$109,365.66 spent so far out of US$155,557.91 total this year, as of September 30, 2026.
• The OTW’s administrative expenses include hosting for our website, trademarks, domains, insurance, tax filing, and annual financial statement audits, as well as productivity, management, and accounting tools (access all admin expenses).

2026 Revenue

• The OTW is entirely supported by your donations—thank you for your generosity!
• We receive a significant portion of our donations each year in the April and October fundraising drives, which together will account for about 47.2% of our income in 2026. We also receive donations via employer matching programs, royalties, and PayPal Giving Fund, which administers donations from programs like Humble Bundle and eBay for Charity. If you’d like to support us while making purchases on those websites, please select the Organization for Transformative Works as your charity of choice!
• Thanks to your generosity in previous years, we have a healthy amount of money in our reserves, which we can use to pay for larger than usual purchases and keep on hand for legal contingencies. As mentioned previously, we plan to continue to upgrade the capacity of AO3’s servers, which significantly increases server equipment and server hosting expenses. The growth of AO3 and other projects of the OTW also requires more volunteers and administrative support, further increasing expenses. The budget spreadsheet projects a withdrawal of US$175,000 from reserves to cover the costs that exceed the amount of revenue projected to be received this year. This amount may be withdrawn as needed during the year.
• US$755,367.57 received so far (as of September 30, 2026) and US$872,571.85 projected to be received by the end of the year.

Got questions?

If you have any questions about the budget or the OTW’s finances, please contact the Finance committee. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible!

To download the OTW’s 2026 budget update in spreadsheet format, please follow this link.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/otw-finance-2026-budget-update/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=286984

Posted by Myst

https://www.transformativeworks.org/five-things-amy2-said-2/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=286779

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.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/five-things-amy2-said-2/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=286779

Posted by therealmorticia

https://www.transformativeworks.org/september-2026-newsletter-volume-215/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=286762

I. OTW’S 19TH ANNIVERSARY

On September 5, we celebrated the OTW’s 19th anniversary! \o/ Our announcement spotlighted where you can find us, such as the OTW’s social media accounts and additional news outlets. We also challenged fans to participate in an anniversary drabble challenge.

On Fanlore, fans collected special teddy bear-themed badges while completing the site’s annual Stub September challenge, including special OTW-themed editions for the OTW’s anniversary.

For October, Fanlore is celebrating conventions with Contober! They’ll be highlighting terminology, activities, and events related to conventions, and would love fans’ help expanding convention pages on Fanlore. Check out Fanlore’s conventions category or follow along on social media for themed posts all month long.

II. ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

In September, Accessibility, Design, & Technology deployed version 1.7.0 and 1.8.0, alongside ongoing coding and reviewing work.

Open Doors finished multiple imports in September—thank you to both Open Doors volunteers and external moderators for their work this month!

• Homosapien Press
• Mediafans
• Futures Without End
• American Horror Fic Exchange

They also announced the import of Cardie-ologist & Henrietta Wotton’s memorial archives.

In August, Policy & Abuse received 6,464 tickets. Support received 4,795 tickets, partially due to a continued increase in account recovery-related tickets as explained in last month’s newsletter.
User Response Translation completed 99 requests from Policy & Abuse and Support, and Tag Wrangling wrangled approximately over 658,000 tags, or around 1,500 tags per volunteer. They also announced 14 new canonicals in their September news post.

III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW

On September 15, TWC published No. 49 of Transformative Works and Cultures, their general issue, containing eleven full essays, eight Symposium essays, and three book reviews.

Translation completed their latest round of recruitment, with Basque re-joining their list of languages.

Legal has responded to several fan queries about law and fandom, and is carefully watching legal proposals in the U.S. and around the world.

IV. GOVERNANCE

Board has been preparing for their new term beginning October 1, welcoming new directors Jennifer Howard, Rebecca C Moritz, and Theodore Bloyd, and saying farewell to departing directors Anh Pham and Qiao Chu. Board Assistants Team has been supporting them with turnover, creating additional training documentation, and preparing for the October Board meeting.

Organizational Culture Roadmap has been collaborating with Communications to prepare a future news post series and working with ICCR to finalize procedures to handle compromised volunteer accounts and other situations that necessitate urgent access removal.

Strategic Planning has been wrapping up the 2023-2026 strategic plan overview by finalizing progress updates on goals and making notes for the next strategic plan.

V. OUR VOLUNTEERS

Volunteers & Recruiting conducted recruitment for five committees: Accessibility, Design, & Technology; AO3 Documentation; Communications; Open Doors; User Response Translation; and Volunteers & Recruiting. They also completed an internal audit of their internal volunteer induction and removal procedures.

From August 23 to September 16, Volunteers & Recruiting received 239 new requests, and completed 280, leaving them with 53 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of September 16, 2026, the OTW has 1,106 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.

New Directors: Jennifer Howard, Rebecca C Moritz, and Theodore Bloyd
New Committee Chairs/Leads: corr and peaandsea (Volunteers & Recruiting Chairs) and Whatsit (Policy & Abuse Chair)
New BAT Volunteers: 2 Volunteers
New Fanlore Volunteers: 90Percent Human (Team Coordinator), 1 Discord Moderator, and Copywake, Reg, RosaNooktown, and 2 other Policy & Admin Volunteers
New Finance Volunteers: Elizabeth Wiltshire and Harlan Lieberman-Berg (Bookkeepers)
New Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Import Assistant
New Support Volunteers: anticle, eldfjall, gloriouscacophony, Hugo, kenny 1883, Lily M, Maria Sage, Nio, Ooggieboogiesboys, Teddy Naleen, whynothana, Yara, and 6 other Volunteers
New Tag Wrangling Volunteers: AJ, ajbee, Alec, Amethyst, Annabel, Arii, Ays, blagi, Caira, Candylotor, CB, Chorus, Cloudy, DanDan, DaniB, Daphcres, Dayao, E11L, emberyuki, EmilyMaria, Estel, Evon, Fallguy, Fang, Fengnuan, feyscape, freak20375, Huanzhu, hyckleren, Julia G, Jule05, kirinki, LaisQuack, Lindsey-Y, Lisweetjuices, Lucy Stars, Luvsni, Mandyjie, marshiestars, Merryvair, Morgalion, Nikki Rain, Novic, Peach S, Pilzchen, RespectedWhaman, Reverie, Robinade, rubberorange, ShadowSanctum, Soph, SuddenlyLee, Wallace, Winho, yataga, and Yoshi (Tag Wrangling Volunteers)
New Translation Volunteers: ainotski, Demkó, dila, Evie E, Hana Maze, Katari, lawmag, ­Markell, Nasumica, ToothOfTheRose, Tuva Boman, Zeina, and 7 other Translators
New Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: ambiverti, HannaC, MapleLynn, sonofasaxophone, and 2 other Volunteers

Departing Committee Chairs/Leads: Brian Austin (AD&T Chair) and 1 Translation Chair
Departing Communications Volunteers: callmeri (Posting Volunteer) and 1 TikTok Moderator
Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Chair Track Volunteer
Departing Open Doors Volunteers: 1 Administrative Volunteer and 1 Digital Collections Intern
Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Chair Track Volunteer, 1 Supervisor, and 1 Volunteer
Departing Support Volunteers: John Pork and 7 other Volunteers; 1 AD&T Liaison Volunteer
Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: PhoenixAsh, Wicked, and 3 other Tag Wrangling Volunteers
Departing Translation Volunteers: 1 Volunteer Manager
Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: corr and peaandsea (Chair Assistants), and 1 Volunteer

For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/september-2026-newsletter-volume-215/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=286762