Where Your Donations Go

NaNoWriMo and the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program are both run by the Office of Letters and Light, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charity. Your donations to the Office of Letters and Light help us bring free creative writing programs for kids and adults in over 500 cities and towns, 3,000 classrooms, and 200 libraries every year.

To learn more on how we spend money from donations, grants
, merchandise sales, and corporate sponsorships, please peruse our nearly impossible-to-read 2011 Office of Letters and Light expense budget! (PDF version here!)

In the NaNoWriMo main program, your donation gives aspiring writers…

• Membership to our community-based website, including an individual writer profile where participants can track their writerly progress (and that of their friends!), post novel excerpts, and exchange NaNoMail messages with other writers.
• Access to the NaNoWriMo forums, where participants can swap advice and guidance about genre, plot, character, technology, rewriting, and reaching the 50K goal-line.
• An invitation to join one of the more than 500 Municipal Liaison-led NaNoWriMo writing chapters at kick-off events, write-ins, and end-of-month parties. At these events, participants receive free stickers and other motivational novel-writing goodies sent from NaNoWriMo headquarters.
• A place to write! Look for “Come Write In!” stickers at your local library. Using resources created with your donations, libraries around the world are transforming their spaces into November noveling zones.
• Weekly pep talks and other encouragement from staff, Municipal Liaisons, and beloved authors.
• Winner certificates and web badges for triumphant victors.
• Post-event advice on revision, and other ideas on taking a manuscript to the next level.

The same donation also gives participants in our Young Writers Program…

• Free profile/membership to our award-winning and community-based websites specifically designed to appeal to and inspire young writers and educators: http://ywp.nanowrimo.org
• Access to site forums and NaNoMail, which enable students to communicate about books, writing, and reading with other young authors worldwide.
• Pep talks from staff and Young Adult authors that excite and inspire participants.
• Writing incentives such as participant badges for posting on Facebook, Twitter, and blogs, and—at the end of each challenge—winner badges and certificates for every child and teen who meets their word-count goal.
• Free and exciting writerly tools, including three tracks of workbooks designed specifically for elementary school, middle school, and high school students. These workbooks teach all elements of novel-writing in a fun but effective manner and have become so popular that many adults use them too!
• Post-event advice for young authors with revision overviews and information about youth writing contests, creative writing centers, and other online creative writing events.

Finally, your donation gives teachers and educators who are leading NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program classrooms…

• Eight weeks of exciting creative writing curriculum that has been mapped to Common Core Language Arts standards.
• A Virtual Classroom on the YWP website, where teachers can more easily inspire students and track their writerly progress.
• Access to special educator-only forums where teachers can exchange encouragement, advice, and lesson plans before, during, and after each event.
• Helpful “how-to’s” on hosting a successful month-long, deadline-driven writing event in a classroom from beginning to end. This advice has been complied from educators who have facilitated our events in their own classrooms and not only lived to tell about it, but keep coming back for more!
• NaNoWriMo kits for their students that include posters and progress charts with buttons and stickers. More than 3,000 of these kits will be mailed out in 2011.
• An opportunity to participate in our AlphaSmart NEO Loaner Program. For each event, we lend up to 100 NEOS to participating classrooms in need of word processors. This is done completely free of charge, including shipping.
• Teacher-only lesson plans that expand upon concepts taught to students in the Young Writer workbooks.