i might know what to do someday.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34816

In case you missed it, earlier this month AO3 exited open beta! Earlier this year, we also reached 10 million users and 17 million fanworks. We’re awed by all these milestones we’ve reached as a community, and, as always, are very grateful for all your support.

These milestones would not be possible without the hard work of the volunteers who are part of the Accessibility, Design, & Technology committee (AD&T). AD&T is the team behind developing, updating, and maintaining the AO3’s software and infrastructure, whose work you can keep up with by reading the release notes posts with the list of code updates and fixes. Recently, our AD&T volunteers and contributors moved collections to Elasticsearch as well as made improvements to bookmark filtering and sorting.

If you're familiar with coding and would like to help, we welcome contributions from anyone! Check out our Contributing Guidelines and other documentation on our GitHub repository. All contributors are credited in our release notes.

If you're interested in helping AO3 but don't have any coding experience, consider contributing to AO3 in some other way, such as by donating!

We’ve prepared new donation gifts for this Drive as well, such as the US$350 Fix-It Kit, for when you need to do a little fix-it for canon; and the US$100 tech travel bag for all your fic reading and fanwork creation needs!

As per usual, we have a sticker set at the US$45 level, with a theme in celebration of the inherently human and collaborative nature of fannish culture and fandom, as well as encouragement of new beginnings.

Fiber Art Weavers, who generously donated OTW-themed recycled cotton blankets previously have kindly donated some more this Drive! We’re very excited to add them to our donation gifts at the US$600 level, but please note that these are limited in number and cannot be saved up for with a recurring donation unlike the other gifts. Once again, thank you so much to Fiber Art Weavers for their donation!

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 a thank-you gift that your recurring donation will be adding up to, and once you’ve “saved” enough to get your item, you will get an email from Development & Membership to confirm your shipping address. You must respond to this email for the donation gift to be sent to you. 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. For more information regarding donating, refer to the Donations and Membership FAQ.

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 this year’s election, which will be held in August. For more information about OTW elections, refer to our elections website.

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, 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.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34816

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34811

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. Preparation for the 2025 audit of financial statements is currently ongoing!

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 (access the 2026 budget spreadsheet for more detailed information):

2026 Expenses

Archive of Our Own (AO3)

• US$58,283.93 spent so far out of US$850,040.85 total this year, as of March 31, 2026.
• 71.2% 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 projected AO3 expenses also include US$500,000 to purchase new database servers, as well as US$60,000 for new firewalls and routers and US$35,000 in server related equipment to increase the capacity of existing servers to handle expected site traffic growth through the year.

Open Doors

• US$1,957.84 spent so far out of US$8,731.05 total this year, as of March 31, 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$317.00 spent so far out of US$6,512.63 total this year, as of March 31, 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 was awarded in 2025.

Fanlore

• US$2,228.24 spent so far out of US$46,688.30 total this year, as of March 31, 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$0 spent so far out of US$2,927.92 total this year, as of March 31, 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$22,123.05 spent so far out of US$136,004.81 total this year, as of March 31, 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$32,837.40 spent so far out of US$144,203.13 total this year, as of March 31, 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 36.2% 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$375,000 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$147,393.22 received so far (as of March 31, 2026) and US$830,450.00 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 in spreadsheet format, please follow this link.

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.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34811