OTW Finance: 2023 Budget

During the last year, the OTW Finance team has continued its work of ensuring that the organization’s bills are paid, tax returns filed, and standard accounting procedures met. Preparation for the 2022 audit of financial statements is currently ongoing!

The team has also been diligently working to meet the OTW’s 2023 needs, and is proud to present to you this year’s budget (access the 2023 budget spreadsheet for more detailed information):

2023 Expenses

Archive of Our Own (AO3)

• US$99,854.48 spent so far out of US$295,285.76 total this year, as of February 28, 2023.
• 59.4% of the OTW’s expenses go towards maintaining the 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$74,000 to purchase new servers, as well as US$77,000 in server related equipment to increase the capacity of existing servers to handle expected site traffic growth through the year.

Open Doors

• US$2,232.86 spent so far out of US$5,526.16 total this year, as of February 28, 2023.
• Open Doors’ expenses consist of hosting, backup, and domain costs for imported fanwork archives, as well as an allocated share of newly adopted OTW-wide productivity tools (access all program expenses).

Transformative Works and Cultures

• US$847.70 spent so far out of US$3,509.70 total this year, as of February 28, 2023.
• Transformative Works and Cultures‘ expenses are the journal’s website hosting, publishing, and storage fees, as well as an allocated share of newly adopted OTW-wide productivity tools (access all program expenses).

Fanlore

• US$6,222.79 spent so far out of US$16,201.99 total this year, as of February 28, 2023.
• Fanlore’s expenses are its share of allocated server hardware, maintenance and colocation costs, as well as its portion of newly adopted OTW-wide productivity tools (access all program expenses).

Legal Advocacy

• US$0.00 spent so far out of US$5,258.00 total this year, as of February 28, 2023.
• 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 newly adopted OTW-wide productivity tools (access all program expenses).

Con Outreach

• US$0.00 spent so far out of US$2,000.00 total this year, as of February 28, 2023.
• Budgeted expenses include US$1,000.00 for convention outreach activities on behalf of the OTW, which include convention tabling fees, volunteer attendance, and related presentation materials, as well as US$1,000.00 for convention giveaways (access all program expenses).

Fundraising and Development

• US$9,235.91 spent so far out of US$79,625.11 total this year, as of February 28, 2023.
• 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, 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 newly adopted OTW-wide productivity tools (access fundraising expenses).

Administration

• US$21,093.22 spent so far out of US$89,172.96 total this year, as of February 28, 2023.
• 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).

2023 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 27% of our income in 2023. 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 the Archive’s servers, which significantly increases server equipment and server hosting expenses. The growth of the Archive and other projects of the OTW also requires more volunteers and administrative support, further increasing expenses. The budget spreadsheet projects a withdrawal of US$130,000 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$69,477.12 received so far (as of February 28, 2023) and US$370,320.00 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 2023 budget in spreadsheet format, please follow this link.