The OTW is the name of the nonprofit organization created to advocate for fandom and to house other projects such as the archive (which will be known as An Archive Of Our Own) and the academic journal.

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OTW was created to work toward a future in which all fannish works are recognized as legal and transformative, and accepted as legitimate creative activity.

Our mission is to be proactive and innovative in protecting and defending our work from commercial exploitation and legal challenge, and to preserve our fannish economy, values, and way of life by protecting and nurturing our fellow fans, our work, our commentary, our history, and our identity, while providing the broadest possible access to fannish activity for all fans.

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Transformative works are creative works about characters or settings created by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creators.

Transformative works include but are not limited to fanfiction, real person fiction, fan vids, and graphics.

A transformative use is one that, in the words of the U.S. Supreme Court, "adds something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the [source] with new expression, meaning, or message." A story from Voldemort's perspective is transformative, so is a story about a pop star that illustrates something about current attitudes toward celebrity or sexuality.

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The term transformative was specifically chosen to highlight in the nonprofit organization's name one of the key legal defenses for fanworks of all kinds (including real person fiction): that they are transformative of original source materials.

The courts have analyzed "right of publicity" claims against creative works by using the transformative use test from copyright law, so this also applies to one of the main legal issues real person fiction faces. Because one of our primary goals is to defend the right of fanworks to exist, having a key defense for them in our name is important to the organization.

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A transformative work takes something existing and turns it into something with a new purpose, sensibility, or mode of expression.

Transformative works include but are not limited to fanfiction, real person fiction, fan vids, and fan art. The OTW is interested in all kinds of transformative works, but our priority will be to support and defend the types of works hosted in our archive, and the fans who create them.

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No. We welcome anyone who would like to help!

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The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) is a nonprofit organization established by fans to serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms.

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OTW is an organization created by fans, for fans. It's run by a board of directors. See About Us for more information.

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The 2007-2008 Board was appointed to get the OTW up and running. All subsequent boards will be elected by OTW members. It is the Board's responsibility to organize committees, make final decisions, keep financial records, handle compliance, and so on.

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Board members are asked to serve three-year terms. One-third of the Board is elected every year (starting after the first year). Every member of the OTW gets one vote in the election, regardless of how much they contribute.

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The Board determines which committees should be organized, then appoints chairs to those committees and approves committee members chosen by the chairs. The initial committee members were chosen from people who responded to the first public "Willing to Serve" call for volunteers.

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Absolutely! Please contact our Volunteers committee.

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We are always on the lookout for great committee members! Committees are appointed annually, with occasional midseason replacements as needed. Chairs generally have a free hand in appointing their committees, and they will naturally be drawing most from those who have volunteered with their committee or have other (fannish or real-world) relevant experience. If you are interested in serving on a particular committee, please let the Volunteers committee know.

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The Board is elected from among members in good standing who have served at least one year on a committee.

Please note that Board members are required by U.S. law to serve under their legal names, so if this or a connection between your fannish pseudonym and legal name would be problematic for you, you cannot serve on the Board. You can still volunteer and serve on committees and as a committee chair, however, under a fannish pseudonym. If you are interested in running for the Board, please contact the Elections committee.

Naomi Novik put out a call for those willing to serve in the organization in June of 2007, and chose the first board from among those who responded, on the basis of putting together a team with the particular set of skills and experience needed to set up the infrastructure of a nonprofit organization, including its bylaws. These bylaws include the rules and terms under which a membership could be gathered and a future board legally elected.

A third of the board seats will be up for election this year, and within three years, the entire board will have been elected by the membership.

There are currently around 100 volunteers participating in the OTW's projects as board members, staffers, and volunteers. Most of them did not know each other before their involvement with the OTW.

Some have been recruited through friends, but the large majority are those who have volunteered in response to our public recruiting posts. OTW's volunteers include people of many races, genders, cultures, sexual identities, and abilities. The OTW does not discriminate on the basis of any of the above, and we value diversity among our staff.

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We welcome everyone who wishes to discuss sources (shows, bands, sports players, anime, etc.) and fandom; we welcome everyone who creates or enjoys fanfiction, vids, fanart, and other kinds of transformative works.

We are all fans first, and that is why we are giving our time to the organization.

The OTW is run by the same people who have helped make, collectively: The Automatic Archive software, Yuletide, Buffistas.org, Polyamorous Recs, Pornish Pixies, the Exwood Archive, Vividcon, con.txt, DSX, DSA, The Snarry Reader, the "Snape After Deathly Hallows" fest, the SGA Big Bang, the Sugar Quill, the DS Seekrit Santa, the Supernatural Wiki, the Foresmutters Project, Sweet Charity, pirate_hunters, the Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive, the X-Men Movieverse Fan Fiction archive—among many other major fannish projects—and more stories, vids, and fannish art than you could shake the proverbial stick at.

You can find the biographies of the current Board of Directors, including their fannish affiliations, here on the website.

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We believe that volunteering is what fandom is all about: volunteering our time, our energy, our hearts (and yes, from time to time our funds—like when we pitch in to help someone travel to a con) in service of a thing we love and the people we love it with.

The people building the OTW are donating time and energy because we want the OTW to exist in order to serve fandom. Same goes for the people who build holiday fic exchanges, the people who run cons, the people who make fannish icons for free, the people who write all kinds of glorious stories and make beautiful vids for free. (Besides, doing this kind of thing with other fans is incredibly fun!)

Because we are an all-volunteer organization, our staff can change frequently, as volunteers' available time may change unexpectedly or vary from month to month. Community Relations keeps a current staff list in the otw_news journal, but this may not always be completely up to date, so please note that the best way to reach us is via the shared addresses listed on our Contact page.

Copyright is intended to protect the creator's right to profit from her work for a period of time to encourage creative endeavor and the widespread sharing of knowledge. But this does not preclude the right of others to respond to the original work, either with critical commentary, parody, or, we believe, transformative works.

In the United States, copyright is limited by the fair use doctrine. The legal case of Campbell v. Acuff-Rose held that transformative uses receive special consideration in fair use analysis. For those interested in reading in-depth legal analysis, there is a bibliography at the Fandom Lawyers LJ community.

Fair use is the right to make some use of copyrighted material without getting permission or paying. It is a basic limit on copyright law that protects free expression. “Fair use” is an American phrase, although all copyright laws have some limits that keep copyright from being private censorship.

Fair use favors uses that (1) are noncommercial and not sold for a profit; (2) are transformative, adding new meaning and messages to the original; (3) are limited, not copying the entirety of the original; and (4) do not substitute for the original work. None of these factors is absolutely necessary for fair use, but they all help, and we believe that fanworks like those in the archive easily qualify as fair uses based on all these factors.

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There is a distinction between plagiarism (the unacknowledged use of someone else's words claimed as one's own), fanfiction (the acknowledged or obvious borrowing of story elements to tell a new story in the fanfiction writer's words), and quotation (the acknowledged or obvious use of small excerpts of another's work).

(By "obvious" we mean that even if a fan writer didn't put a disclaimer on her story, readers know that she did not invent Wonder Woman or Voldemort, or the phrase "Use the Force, Luke.")

Plagiarism is deceitful and prevents the original author from receiving credit for her own original work. Fanfiction and quotation are important fair uses which acknowledge the original author and her work. The OTW does not support plagiarism; we do support fanfiction and quotation.

No. While case law in this area is limited, we believe that current copyright law already supports our understanding of fanfiction as fair use.

We seek to broaden knowledge of fan creators' rights and reduce the confusion and uncertainty on both fan and pro creators' sides about fair use as it applies to fanworks. One of our models is the documentary filmmakers' statement of best practices in fair use, which has helped clarify the role of fair use in documentary filmmaking.

The OTW's Legal committee is consulting with the Stanford Fair Use Project and the EFF.

The mission of the OTW is first and foremost to protect the fan creators who work purely for love and share their works for free within the fannish gift economy, who are looking to be part of a community and connect to other fans and to celebrate and to respond to the media works that they enjoy.

These fans create vibrant and active communities around the work they are celebrating, tend to spend heaps of money on the original work and associated merchandise, and encourage others to buy also. They are not competing with the original creator's work and if anything help to promote it.

While some transformative works legitimately circulate in the for-profit marketplace-parodies such as The Wind Done Gone (the retelling of Gone With The Wind from the perspective of a slave), critical analyses that quote extensively from an original, "unauthorized guides," etc.—that really isn't what fanfic writers and fan creators in general are doing, or looking to do. We just want to enjoy our hobby and our communities, and to share our creative work, without the constant threat hanging overhead that an overzealous lawyer at some corporation will start sending out cease-and-desist notices, relying not on legal merit, but on the disproportionate weight of money on their side.

Not at all. The OTW does not oppose the derivative works right that allows copyright owners to authorize a mass-market film adaptation, for instance, or allows Anne McCaffrey to authorize Todd and not somebody else to commercially publish Pern sequels. The first president of the OTW is Naomi Novik, herself a professional novelist, whose work is under copyright and who has a stake on both sides.

The mission of the OTW is to support the noncommercial sharing of fanworks within fan communities.

Some transformative works do legitimately circulate in the for-profit marketplace as well: parodies such as The Wind Done Gone (the retelling of Gone With The Wind from the perspective of a slave), critical analyses that quote extensively from an original, "unauthorized guides," and other types of transformative works have long traditionally been sold.

However, these works are generally of a type which the original copyright owner would not authorize and which the courts have found should be allowed regardless of the copyright owner's consent. If you try to sell your derivative Harry Potter novel, on the other hand, you would have to make a strong case justifying your doing so without authorization from J.K. Rowling. The courts are going to be justly skeptical that you are borrowing her property for any reason other than to make yourself some cash off her characters.

We are absolutely willing to help if we can find someone with the necessary legal knowledge. Fortunately, our friends at the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) are making a major effort to develop global legal expertise, and we plan to call on them in such situations. In any situation, US or non-US, we'll see what we can do based on the facts and our resources.

Right now we have no plans for a test case. We are focusing on building relationships with legal advocacy groups like the EFF and developing legal resources of our own.

One of the most exciting and helpful developments in copyright of late has been the development of "best practices," principles and procedures establishing what constitutes fair use in the judgment of a community of creative users. Best practices can successfully defend fair use rights even without litigation - see the statement of best practices in fair use. It is our position that, at a minimum, noncommercial, transformative fanworks are fair use, and the OTW will defend that position, just as the documentary filmmakers are using their best practices to make films and do business without litigation.

No, it doesn't. Profit matters, and the degree of transformative quality matters: telling stories around a campfire, freely sharing nonprofit fanfiction, summarizing plot in a book review, or making a documentary film about fans, is not the same as a major commercial derivative enterprise like making a major TV miniseries out of a novel.

Most countries have exceptions to copyright rights for various purposes. In Europe, the more common term is “fair dealing.” Countries differ in their treatment of the scope of copyright and exceptions.

For example, in Canada, parody is not a specifically recognized defense to copyright infringement, although it can be fair dealing in appropriate circumstances. Australia has limited protections regarding the freedom of communications. The Gowers Review of Intellectual Property in the UK is expected to bring about changes in UK laws regarding parody and transformative use.

In other words, it’s complicated. And it’s ever-changing.

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Because the OTW and its servers are based in the US, we believe that US law applies to content in the OTW archive, even if the author is a resident or national of a different country. However, different countries make different claims about the reach of their laws. Your country of origin's laws are likely to apply to you. It is possible that some sections of the OTW policies are broader, or perhaps more restrictive, than a specific jurisdiction's laws.

Other organizations that serve an international audience are dealing with the varying legal regimes under which their users live, work and play. Creative Commons, for example, has developed a multi-step process to "port" their licenses internationally by "both linguistically translating the licenses and legally adapting them to particular jurisdictions." http://creativecommons.org/international

Ideally, we would like to develop a similar process within the OTW, but for the time being, we are happy to work with our friends at EFF when engaging in legal advocacy outside the United States. If you would like to work on non-US legal issues or education, please contact the Volunteers Committee.

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In a fiscal sense, no one; OTW is a nonprofit, so any revenue the organization takes in goes into the organization's coffers to support the work the organization does. The OTW does not currently have any paid staff and is run by volunteers. Our official conflict-of-interest policy is the one recommended by the IRS for nonprofits.

The OTW is incorporated in the state of Delaware, in the United States.

The OTW will need money to purchase goods and services that cannot be provided by its volunteers, such as expenses related to operations and certain administrative costs. Such operational expenses include the purchase of software and server space to create and maintain the archive. Administrative expenses include a variety of items typical to a nonprofit organization, such as insurance, paypal fees, and monthly charges to maintain a bank account. As the organization grows, additional administrative and fiscal management resources will include the services of an independent accountant, tax preparer, and auditor.

The Board is ultimately responsible for these decisions as part of its fiduciary obligation. For smaller transactions, the Board will delegate responsibility to OTW’s committees to determine what goods and services may be necessary. All expenditures are reviewed by the Financial committee to insure they fit the goals of the individual committee and overall goals of the organization, as well as the established budgets. The Financial committee is responsible for making payments.

Yes.

The IRS has approved OTW's tax-exempt, nonprofit status. One of the benefits of our nonprofit status is that any donation that you make to the organization, including your US $10 OTW membership fee, is now tax-deductible in the United States! Even better, your past donations are also tax-deductible, back to our date of incorporation: September 5, 2007.

Please note that if you are located outside the US, your contribution may or may not be tax-deductible. You should consult with a tax adviser and see whether a gift to a US 501(c)(3) qualifies for a tax deduction under your local laws.

Absolutely! Fans living outside the United States also will be able to use the Web site tools to make electronic donations.

It is important for donors to realize that the OTW must track the names and some contact information about donors to comply with IRS regulations. Given the prevalence of fans using pseudonyms in their fannish life, this information will be held closely by the OTW and will only be available to those individuals on the Board and the Development, Financial and Election committees, who must have access to this information to perform their duties.

Anonymous donations can only be made in cash. We are considering what security procedures can be put in place should these kinds of donations represent a significant portion of our donor base.

The OTW is a nonprofit corporation, subject to laws and regulations dictating its fiduciary responsibilities to conduct activities in a manner that upholds the public trust. The OTW will be scrutinized not only by its members and fans outside the organization, but also by the IRS and the State of Delaware, our incorporation state.

There are a number of additional safeguards in place. Misuse of OTW funds constitutes fraud and could be subject to prosecution. This operates as a solid deterrent. Distribution of the OTW’s funds will follow generally accepted accounting principles with regard to oversight and authorization of expenditures. As the organization grows and its financial responsibilities increase, the organization’s accounts will be kept by an outside accountant who will be required to make regular reports to the Financial committee and the Board. Beginning in 2009, an annual audit will be conducted each year, and financial statements will be approved by the auditors. Finally, the OTW is required to file Form 990 with the IRS each year to report the organization’s financial activities.

The OTW will produce an annual report, which will include a summary of OTW’s activities over the previous year, as well as the organization’s financial statements. This will be made available each year on the OTW Web site. The Form 990 is a public document; however, it will not be available on the OTW Web site, as it contains personal information about individuals that should not be made available via the Internet. Individuals can obtain a paper copy of the annual report and the Form 990 for the cost of duplication and postage by contacting the Treasurer. Please put “Annual Report/990” in the subject line and provide a mailing address.

The OTW’s first annual report is available here.

The OTW will issue future annual reports within 120 days of the close of the fiscal year (December 31).

No one (including the OTW as an organization) will be making money from the archive or its content; in fact, the opposite, because the OTW will be paying to host the archive. Advertising will not be shown. Instead, we will likely have public radio-style pledge drives to ask for support from our users. However, no donation will ever be required to use the archive or any of its tools.

The OTW accepts donations by credit card or e-check through Paypal, and by check via mail to our post office box. See Get involved for the details.

Paypal does not reveal credit card or bank account numbers to the OTW. It is an automated service that processes payments and allows OTW to transfer the funds directly to the OTW’s bank. Paypal is administered by an outside company, which adds another level of oversight to the OTW’s financial activities.

Personal checks received by mail will necessarily have account information on them, but the information will not be retained.

The Archive Of Our Own is in beta as of October 2008. For information about archive policies, please see the archive Terms of Service and FAQ.

Our first goal is to create a new open-source software package to allow fans to host their own robust, full-featured archives, which can support even an archive on a very large scale of hundreds of thousands of stories and has the social networking features to make it easier for fans to connect to one another through their work.

Our second goal is to use this software to provide a noncommercial and nonprofit central hosting place for fanfic and other transformative fanworks, where these can be sheltered by the advocacy of the OTW and take advantage of the OTW's work in articulating the case for the legality and social value of these works.

No one (including the OTW as an organization) will be making money from the archive or its content; in fact, the opposite, because the OTW will be paying to host the archive. Advertising will not be shown. Instead, we will likely have public radio-style pledge drives to ask for support from our users. However, no donation will ever be required to use the archive or any of its tools.

Yes, absolutely.

We will not be policing the archive actively; someone must report a violation of the TOS to us before it is investigated. An OTW committee will be organized from volunteers to handle these reports of TOS violations. These volunteers will themselves be archive users and fans. Like all OTW committees, this group's membership will rotate on a regular basis.

Building the kind of archive the OTW envisions is not a simple process. We're not just setting up an archive using existing software, but building new open-source archive software that can be easily maintained and easily reused, and which can handle potentially millions of stories from hundreds of thousands of simultaneous users.

This work is being done by a group of volunteers, including a group of trainees learning how to write and maintain code, to help build the fannish community of coders and a group of people who can help to maintain the archive software in future. In other words, we're not just building the Archive, we're building the builders.

We are also trying to write comprehensible and fan-friendly policies, such as content and abuse policies, with as much input from fandom as possible, using focus groups and public comment periods.

This will take a little while to do, but we absolutely believe it's worth the time.

You can follow the progress of the Archive's development in our biweekly newsletters. To get involved, contact the Volunteers committee.

No, not at all. In fact, we hope that other fans will use our archive software (which will be open-source and free to use and modify) to build their own archives.

In the Archive of Our Own, we hope to create a multi-fandom archive with great features and fan-friendly policies, which is customizable and scalable, and will last for a very long time. We'd like to be fandom's deposit library, a place where people can back up existing work or projects and have stable links, not the only place where anyone ever posts their work. It's not either/or; it's more/more!

We'll do our best. While spam prevention will evolve along with typical spam attacks, we currently plan to require email confirmation for new account creation, and to use a CAPTCHA-style spam prevention measure for comments from non-registered users. We feel this is a good compromise that keeps signing up for an account accessible, while also protecting users from anonymous spammers.

The OTW is committed to protecting the privacy of fans, whether they are users of our services or not. We do not allow anyone to connect fan identities and real life identities on our services against the wishes of the individual in question. Our content policy committee and focus groups are working on policies and procedures to both prevent this and minimize the damage should someone break the rules.

The Open Doors project of the Organization for Transformative Works is dedicated to preserving fanworks for the future. Our goal in particular is to preserve those fannish projects that might otherwise be lost due to lack of time, interest, or resources on the part of the current maintainer.

The Archive of Our Own is currently in beta. Once it is up and running, we will be happy to help maintainers of typical fanfic archives preserve or backup their collections by transferring the contents of their archive into the Archive of Our Own. We plan to collect these stories under the name of the archive from which they came, as well as to set up automatic redirecting from the original URLs if desired and whenever possible. Other fannish projects that cannot be integrated into the Archive may also be preserved as special collections, resources permitting. Both kinds of projects will be featured on the Open Doors page.

Please see the Open Doors project page for a complete explanation.

There are several advantages to transferring your collection.

• Long-term preservation. Your collection will be maintained and supported even if you lose internet access, interest, or time.
• Infrastructure. The OTW is set up to bring in volunteers, provide advice and technical help for maintaining and growing your collection or project.
• Encouraging contributions. Volunteers and contributors are more likely to invest their time and energy in a project when they have a real expectation that their work will be preserved into the future.
• Financial support in a nonprofit environment. The OTW will never exploit your work or the work of your contributors for individual profit.

These are still in progress and will be posted under the Open Doors project page as soon as they are ready.

While the Archive of Our Own welcomes fanworks of all kinds, our resources for supporting projects that can not be easily integrated to the Archive are limited. While we are open to talking to the maintainer of any fannish project which needs our help, we are not providing general hosting like an ISP. A special project that requires its own server space or other resources will need to be approved by the Board as a special collection before it is brought on.

The maintainer of a collection brought on under Open Doors also has to agree to the Open Doors Terms of Service.

Foresmutters is a bibliography and collection of some of the stories from the very earliest days of recorded slash: principally Kirk/Spock from the mid-1970s. The original maintainer of Foresmutters, Mary Ellen Curtin, was urgently looking for help to preserve and grow the collection, just as we were looking for a test case for the Open Doors project. She was willing to work with us on the Open Doors Terms of Service and to come on while they were still in a tentative state.

Once the Archive Of Our Own is up and running, we will be happy to help the maintainer of an existing archive to transfer the contents of their archive into the Archive Of Our Own.

While exactly how this will work is still under development, we currently are thinking the process would create a new community for these transferred stories within the archive, owned by the maintainer, and all stories added will be tagged with the name of the original archive. So for instance, if the Due South Archive at Hexwood archive were transferred in, all the stories might be tagged automatically with "hexwood" and a Hexwood community would be created within the Archive Of Our Own. The moderator of the original archive would be invited to moderate the community within the Archive of Our Own.

In cases where the original archive site and address are still available, we also hope to set up automatic redirecting from the original URLs to the new locations in the Archive of Our Own, ensuring that existing links will be preserved. We also welcome maintainers who wish to back up the contents of their archives in the Archive of Our Own.

Archives that have been integrated into the Archive of Our Own will also be listed in the Open Doors gallery.

Yes, absolutely. We will also gladly work with you to find some solution other than deletion that preserves your work as part of the collection in a way that makes you comfortable.

Transformative Works and Cultures comes out twice a year, on March 15 and September 15.

Detailed online submission guidelines are available here: http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions

Transformative Works and Cultures prints peer-reviewed academic articles about transformation, broadly conceived, about fan engagement with various sorts of texts, and about fan communities; editorially reviewed meta articles and personal essays; book reviews; and interviews.

Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) copyrights under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Anyone is free to reprint or remix, with attribution, anything in TWC without obtaining specific permission, as long as the original publication information is attributed and/or hotlinked back. This means that anybody can post full text of the articles, with attribution, as long as no money is made. Authors may therefore repost full content to their blog or Web site after TWC has been published. Likewise, random people can repost full text without restriction. As long as they attribute it properly, such duplication is fine.

If people want to make money off the text, perhaps by anthologizing the essay in an edited volume, then they must ask. This includes the
author, because once an article appears in TWC, TWC owns the copyright.

TWC grants permission to anyone who requests reprint, regardless of who they are (the author or not), without asking for money. We do this
in the spirit of open access. We require that the editors be asked for for-profit reprinting because we will take the responsibility of tracking down and informing the author.

The journal retaining copyright is standard in academic journal publishing. Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) is thus in line with general practice.

Production editors at presses seeking reprint permission will automatically come to TWC, not the author. Requesting payment for reprints is one way that academic journals make money. However, TWC, because it is associated with the Organization for Transformative Works, a nonprofit organization, and because we want to retain the spirit of open access, will never ask for money to reprint articles.

Our main reason is a purely practical one: TWC retains copyright to protect its ability to grant reprint permission in case the author disappears.

Further, we are committed to open access. If we released copyright to the author, the author could choose to abrogate that by refusing to grant reprint permission. This is not in line with TWC’s mission and goals, which are focused on the free dissemination of ideas.

Because Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) is a multimedia journal that publishes screen shots, embeds videos, and uses hyperlinks, the journal must appear online. PDFs are unable to adequately duplicate the interactive experience of the journal.

Further, because TWC copyrights under under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License, fans may wish to transform the journal by creating PDFs of content and making it generally available. As long as the document provides the URLs of the original source, and as long as the poster does not charge money, this activity is perfectly acceptable under the terms of the CC license. In fact, TWC encourages such transformative fan activity.

Finally, TWC is bucking the importance the academy places on print media. If we created official PDFs, these documents, not the online versions, would be treated as authoritative merely because of the privilege print is provided in the academic publishing industry—and yet the PDF will always be a second-rate static snapshot of an interactive document.

Absolutely! We welcome submissions from everyone as long as the contribution complies with Transformative Works and Cultures's focus and scope. More information is available here: http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/about/editorialPolicies#focusAndScope

Absolutely! We welcome anyone who wants to support the organization. The minimum annual donation for membership is US $10.

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The OTW is able to accept donations via PayPal, or by check via mail to our post office box. See Support the OTW for the details.

PayPal will not reveal credit card or bank account numbers to the OTW. Personal checks received by mail will necessarily have account information on them, but the information will not be retained.

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Fans do not have to pay to use the Archive or any of OTW's other services, including the archive software, academic journal, or wiki. All of these things will be free. We do not charge anyone a membership fee to belong to the OTW community on LiveJournal, or any other journaling service.

We have been formed on the model of public television and radio: anyone can listen to NPR or call in; it is supported by voluntary membership drives. People who pay to become members in the OTW will be able to vote in OTW elections and thereby shape its future direction, but the things we're building will be free and open to everyone, members and nonmembers alike.

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Please fill out our membership form and send in a donation (minimum US $10).

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No. We will never charge a fee to use any of our services, nor will we place paid advertising on fanworks.

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The OTW is a member-supported nonprofit organization, like NPR or PBS. Your donation helps us provide services not just to you personally but to all who might want to use them. Becoming a member also gives you a stake in the organization, and as mentioned above, confers the right to vote in OTW elections.

The requirement that most nonprofits use for membership is a minimum donation. This is a straightforward and easy-to-check requirement, and ensures that each member is a single individual (as opposed to one person creating multiple membership accounts in order to have multiple votes).

These fees also go to help support the OTW - to pay for our operating costs for both the organization and the archive, so that we do not need to use advertising or charge fees to users. We intend to keep our minimum donation low in order to ensure that it is not a barrier to entry for anyone who cares about the organization, but we hope that most members will give more if they can!

Yes.

The IRS has approved OTW's tax-exempt, nonprofit status. One of the benefits of our nonprofit status is that any donation that you make to the organization, including your US $10 OTW membership fee, is now tax-deductible in the United States! Even better, your past donations are also tax-deductible, back to our date of incorporation: September 5, 2007.

Please note that if you are located outside the US, your contribution may or may not be tax-deductible. You should consult with a tax adviser and see whether a gift to a US 501(c)(3) qualifies for a tax deduction under your local laws.

In order to ensure that all voting members of the OTW are in fact real people, and to hold fair elections, we cannot allow gift memberships. Supporters are welcome to make donations in honor of others through our form, but the donations will not confer voting rights or membership status.

Membership costs US $10. In return, you get a membership which lasts for one year, and which entitles you to one vote in the annual organization elections.

Individuals can become members in the OTW; corporations cannot.

Memberships cannot be shared; if you're a member, that membership is yours alone.

One month before your membership expires, we'll send you an email to let you know it's time to start thinking about renewing the membership. A membership can be renewed at any point during the month before it expires.

If you donated during the OTW's startup phase (before 3/24/08), you automatically became a voting member when we opened the doors for membership on 3/24. (If you didn't receive an email from us about that, let us know!) OTW membership lasts for one year; an election will be held within a year of the launch of membership. Donations above the US $10 membership fee will be counted purely as gifts to the organization.

We invite everyone who wants to support the OTW, or who wants a hand in shaping its future, to join the organization as a member.

We thank you for it, and we sing your praises! But it doesn't buy you extra years of membership; for elections purposes, memberships have to be renewed each year.

Or, phrased another way: the first $10 of your annual gift keeps your membership status active for an additional year. Anything you donate beyond that $10, during that year, is a donation, not a membership fee.

We'll do our best. Here's a list of the various terms we use, and definitions for each:

User

Anyone who uses or participates in a project under the umbrella of the OTW, including anyone who contributes content to An Archive Of Our Own. There is no fee associated.

Member

Someone who has paid the annual membership fee of $10 to the OTW, and receives a vote in our annual elections in return. Only an individual can become a member.

Donor

Someone who donates money to the OTW, over and above the $10 membership fee. Individuals and corporations can both be donors. (See our corporate gifts policy for information on how, and under what circumstances, we'll accept corporate gifts.)

Staffer

Someone who is doing a specific, long-term job for the OTW and has access to all of Basecamp and Campfire (our web-based project collaboration tools). These people may be board members, committee members, or individuals (non-board, non-committee) with an assigned long-term task. All staffers are unpaid.

Board Member

Someone who is on the Board of Directors. You'll know these folks because they're listed on our website, and because we'll always use the word "Board" to differentiate Board Members from Members.

Committee Member

Someone who is on a committee. We'll always refer to these folks as "Committee Members," to differentiate them from Members.

volunteer

In lowercase, this means someone who is doing a temporary or limited job for the OTW under the guidance of a committee or the board.

Volunteers

In uppercase, this means the OTW's human resources committee.

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The OTW firmly supports the right of users to separate fannish and nonfannish identities. Donating to the OTW and using the OTW's services are entirely separate—if you choose to donate or become a member (and we hope you do!), you do not need to tell us your fan identity, and we will not have any connection between your fan identity and your financial information or real-life identity.

The OTW is committed to protecting the privacy of fans, whether they are users of our services or not. We do not allow anyone to connect fan identities and real life identities on our services against the wishes of the individual in question. Our content policy committee and focus groups are working on policies and procedures to both prevent this and minimize the damage should someone break the rules.

Only non-membership donations can be made with cash. For membership purposes, we need to be able to connect your payment with a bank account or credit card so we can verify that you’re a real person and an individual when we hold elections.

Only non-membership donations can be made with a money order. For membership purposes, we need to be able to connect your payment with a bank account or credit card so we can verify that you’re a real person and an individual when we hold elections.

OTW memberships can be purchased with a family member’s credit card or bank account if the address associated with the card/account is the same as the address given by the new OTW member (and, of course, if the new OTW member is authorized to use that card/account!).

There will not be a public members list at this time. Please see our Privacy Policy for specific information on under what circumstances we may be obliged to release donor information to third parties. Members are encouraged to identify themselves as such on their own sites, blogs, and journals, and we provide a page of official OTW supporter graphics for this purpose.