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 pay for NaNoWriMo's youth and adult novel-writing programs, as well as the Office of Letters and Light's operating expenses.
Here's the breakdown of how NaNoWriMo and the Young Writers Program fit into the Office of Letters and Light's annual costs.
To read more, please peruse our fine 2008 Office of Letters and Light list of expenses:
When you donate to the Office of Letters and Light, you are giving the gift of inspiration and encouragement to people in over 80 countries. Below, you'll find a list of what your donation makes possible for NaNoWriMo and NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program Participants.
In the NaNoWriMo main program, your donation gives aspiring writers…
- Membership to our community-based website, including a writer profile where participants can track their writerly progress, post novel excerpts, and exchange NaNoMail messages with other writers.
- Access to the NaNoWriMo forums, where staff, volunteers, and fellow participants answer questions about genre, plot, character, technology, revision and word count.
- An opportunity to join local NaNoWriMo writing chapters at write-ins, kick-off parties, and end-of-month parties, and receive stickers and other motivational novel writing goodies.
- Weekly pep talks and other encouragement from staff, Municipal Liaisons, and published authors.
- An opportunity to participate in NaNoWriMo’s AlphaSmart Loaner program, where participants in need can receive a laptop computer free of charge for the month of November.
- Winner certificates and web badges for those who go the 50,000-word distance.
- Post-event advice on revision, contests, and other ways to take a manuscript to the next level.
The same donation also gives participants in our Young Writers Program…
- Free profile/membership to our community-based websites for young writers and educators: http://ywp.nanowrimo.org
- Access to site forums that enable students to communicate with other young writers worldwide.
- Ways to communicate with other young writers around the world using NaNoMail.
- Pep talks from staff and established authors that inspire our young participants to write.
- Downloadable flyers to post at schools, libraries, and community centers.
- Writing incentives such as downloadable participant badges and—at the end of each challenge—downloadable winner badges and certificates for participants and winners.
- Free “How-Tos”, including Young Writer Workbooks that teach all elements of novel writing. We offer three different workbooks—one for elementary school students, one for middle school students, and one for high school students.
- 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…
- Access to teacher-only forums where educators can exchange encouragement, advice, and lesson plans before, during, and after each event.
- Advice on how to successfully host a month-long, deadline-driven writing event in a classroom from beginning to end. The advice has been collected from experienced teachers who have facilitated our events in their classrooms over the past four years.
- Incentive kits for their students that include event posters for their classrooms, and progress charts, buttons, stickers, and fun temporary tattoos for their young writers.
- An opportunity to participate in our YWP AlphaSmart Loaner Program. For each event, we lend up to 100 AlphaSmart Neos to participating classrooms in need of word processors. This is done completely free of charge; OLL even covers shipping.
- Teacher-only lesson plans that expand upon concepts taught to students in the Young Writer workbooks.