By VANESSA SKILDUM
On March 31, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) sent out an operational update to its mailing list, revealing that after 6 years of financial struggle, the not-for-profit organization was going to begin shutting down.
NaNoWriMo began informally in 1996 and became a non-profit organization 10 years later, in 2006. In November, NaNoWriMo challenges writers worldwide to write 50,000 words, which boils down to 1,667 words daily.
Along with the email, a 27-minute video was published where the organisation’s interim executive director, Kilby Blades, discussed what led to the state NaNoWriMo is in. NaNoWriMo has two platforms, one for adults and one called the Young Writers Program (YWP), which is geared towards students and those under 18.
Participation has been steadily declining each year, with 122,280 novels started in 2018 and only 97,819 novels started for 2023. The YWP saw a similar decline, with 55,973 novels started in 2018 and only 44,506 started in 2022; results for 2023 were not tracked. Although participation was a concern, the primary factor was a lack of funding.
NaNoWriMo is a relatively small nonprofit organization with a yearly budget of 1.3 million dollars a year, with the primary amount being 65.9 percent and more than 910 thousand dollars by 2023, going toward staff payroll and benefits. Unlike other nonprofits, NaNoWriMo gets a lot of its funding from sponsorships and merchandise sales. This is to compensate for the steady decline of individual gifts or donations. In 2021, NaNoWriMo received $612,590 in individual donations; in 2023, they received $373,726.
The Covid-19 pandemic significantly impacted the financial situation, but just when NaNoWriMo was about to launch efforts to fundraise, significant issues were brought to light in Nov. 2023. One of the biggest concerns is the safety of minors.
Community members believed that accusations made in May 2023 where a NaNoWriMo forum moderator was grooming children on a different platform were not handled correctly. Many weeks after the initial complaints and the board’s launching an internal investigation, the moderator was removed, but it took longer than community members believed it should.
Additionally, a feature of the YWP is that educators can make accounts and invite their students in the class to participate; however, it was found that anyone could make an educator account without having to prove their status.
These issues resulted in NaNoWriMo focusing on their internal issues, such as how their staff and volunteers had never been required to give background checks or state-mandated youth training.
Ultimately, changes were made to end the forums and eliminate all age spaces so that the issues could be solved, but the damage was done. “We were trying to operate with dozens of features and doing all of them badly without a clear strategic plan in place,” said Blades in the video.
“The problems at this moment are just too long-standing and too big. The organization has held 6-figure debt since 2020. We saw 360 thousand dollars of our projected income, around 30 percent of our annual budget, disappear in the direct aftermath of November of 2023,” they continued later on.
NaNoWriMo did create an environment that fostered creativity, and many well-known novels started out as NaNoWriMo projects like “Cinder” by Marissa Meyer, “The Night Circus” by Erin Morgenstern, and “Anna and the French Kiss” by Stephanie Perkins. While community members and long-time participants are still discussing and participating in the challenge this upcoming year, it will be interesting to see what pops up, if anything, in its place.
Featured image: Wikipedia
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