To make a donation online, use our donation form. Use the donate button located below any thank-you gift to get started. If you’re in the US and would rather donate via check, money order, or cash, refer to How to Donate by Mail.

If you have any questions or issues completing your donation, please contact Development & Membership.

Yes! Our donation form accepts donations from a variety of currencies. When entering a donation amount, select where it says “USD” and choose from a dropdown of currency options.

Yes, in the United States. The OTW is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and all donations made to us are tax-deductible. Our Employer Identification Number is 38-3765024; it will also be included in your donation receipt for your records.

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) nonprofit organization qualifies for a tax deduction under your local laws.

If you wish to become an OTW member, we must be able to link your donation to a specific individual for legal purposes to avoid one person giving multiple times and having the right to several votes. In addition, all donations made by credit card must have a billing address to be processed.

If you wish to donate without providing an address and you live in the United States, you can make a non-membership donation using cash or money order. Please refer to How to Donate by Mail for more information.

Being a member of the OTW means that you have the right to vote in our annual election to elect new members to the OTW Board of Directors. For more information about our elections process, refer to How are Board Directors chosen? and our elections website.

To become a member, you need to donate US$10 to the OTW before June 30 and select “Yes” in response to the question: “Do you want to be an OTW member?” This is a membership donation.

A non-membership donation, while greatly appreciated, does not make you an OTW member and confers no voting benefits. A donation of less than US$10 or one that does not select “Yes” to the question about members is a non-membership donation.

Like many nonprofits, the OTW uses a membership fee as a straightforward and easy-to-check requirement to ensure that each member is a single individual. Otherwise one person could create multiple membership accounts to have multiple votes in our elections.

These fees go to support the OTW—to pay the operating costs for both the organization and all of our projects, so that we do not need to use advertising or charge fees to users. We intend to keep our minimum donation low to ensure that it is not a barrier to entry for anyone who cares about the organization, but we appreciate any members who give more if they can!

To ensure that all voting members of the OTW are in fact real individuals in order to hold fair elections, we do not allow gift memberships. You’re welcome to make donations in honor of others through our form, but these donations will not confer membership upon them.

No. OTW memberships and AO3 accounts are not linked in any way. To get an AO3 account, please join the invitation queue. Donations to the OTW help keep AO3 running, so we welcome your support, but we are committed to offering AO3 as a free service for everyone. There is no connection between individual donations and AO3 accounts.

If you have questions about AO3 invitations, please contact AO3 Support.

No, OTW memberships and AO3 accounts are not linked in any way. The OTW strongly supports the right of fans to separate fannish and non-fannish identities. We will never connect the two, and the databases that contain membership information and AO3 account information are entirely separate.

Our storage and usage of your data is governed by our Terms of Service.

Your membership lasts for one year from your most recent donation. If your donation is received by the “Record Date” for an election or vote, you’ll be eligible to vote in that election, and you’ll receive email notifications with more information about an election or vote when it occurs. The “Record Date” for an election or vote will be 30-60 days before an election ends, and the date(s) of any election period will be publicized at least 14 days before the Record Date.

If you’re not sure when you last donated, please contact Development & Membership.

No. Donations to the OTW cannot be earmarked for a single OTW project or expense. In donating to the OTW, you are donating to the entire organization including both project-specific expenses as well as expenses that are not project-specific and relate to the organization as a whole.

If they were made through Classy/GoFundMe Pro (which we’ve been using since 2023), you can create an account to check your donor portal. To create an account, select “Sign in” on the donation form; this may appear in the sidebar or at the bottom of the page.

To include donations made directly through PayPal, such as from recurring donations set up before 2023, please contact Development & Membership.

Thank-you gifts, also called donation gifts, are optional items that you may choose to receive if you donate over US$45. The list of gifts available changes regularly. Please visit our donation form to view the current selection. For other questions about thank-you gifts, please refer to the FAQ section on our donation page.

With the exception of donations made during our October and April donation drives, thank-you gifts are shipped in monthly batches. (Gifts from November donations are shipped in December, gifts from December donations are shipped in January, etc.) This means that if you donate on the first of the month, your gift will probably not be shipped for five or six weeks.

Depending on what gift you select and what region your gift is shipping to, you may or may not receive a shipping confirmation email.

If you are waiting for a donation gift, please also keep an eye on your email in case we need to reach out to you about your address. We will contact you from [email protected]. Due to a high volume of returns, we are manually double-checking all addresses going to certain regions.

Yes! When you set up your recurring donation you should have selected a thank-you gift that your recurring donation will be adding up to. Once you’ve “saved” enough to get your item, you will get an email from Development & Membership to confirm your shipping address. You must reply to this email. Once you respond to this email, your donation will be sent to you.

If you aren’t sure what gift you selected or want to change what gift you’re saving for, please contact Development & Membership.

When you donate using our donation form, you will have the option to select either “One-time” or “Recurring.” If you select recurring, you will be able to select both a donation frequency and an end date (optionally). By default, it will set up a monthly donation.

To cancel a recurring donation set up through GoFundMe Pro, you can log in to your GoFundMe Pro account. For recurring donations set up before 2023 or via PayPal, you can select your last contribution in PayPal and go to “Manage payments for …,” or go to the Payments tab on your PayPal Settings page. Recurring donations through PayPal cannot be edited. If you wish to change your recurring donation, you must first cancel it and then set up a new one. Setting up a new recurring donation will not affect any thank-you gifts you are saving for.

To change the credit card used in a donation, you will need to alter the PayPal transaction details. Please refer to PayPal help for more information about this, and contact PayPal support for assistance.

If you select “Dedicate my donation in honor or in memory of someone” and include an email in the “Recipient’s email” field, then the email you submit will be notified of your donation. You can also optionally include a message that you’d like to be sent along with the donation notification in the “Your Message to the Recipient” field.

Please contact Development & Membership if you have further questions.