@zerocapitalism @bulbassist I’m going to treat your argument like it’s in good faith, even though I’m pretty sure you’re cherry picking. A lot of other people have responded with good comments on how not-for-profits actually work, etc. You say two things bother you: 1) AO3 not actually being transparent with their funds, and 2) people saying AO3 isn’t making their fundraising goal. Your 3rd point that you actually seemed bothered by was “AO3 milked the corona epidemic to invest in stocks.”
We’re going to hit #2 first because it’s easy: I’ve never heard anyone say AO3 isn’t making their fundraising goal. Maybe like five years ago?? Anyways, clearly they do make their fundraising goals, so if people say that, you’re right! It’s not true!
Okay, point #3: If you’ve read their budget, you would have seen that they clearly show AO3 has two annual fundraising drives. Always. One happens in October. One happens in April. Guess what??? It’s APRIL. This is normal. And if you look at the amount they were aiming for in 2019 versus in 2020, you can see that AO3 has lowered their donation goals for 2020 by $75,655:
I don’t know about you but I would say that asking for *less* money does not constitute “milking the corona epidemic.” Especially considering the corona epidemic has increased traffic on AO3 so much that they had to take emergency measures to ensure the functionality of the website. If anything they’ve reduced the amount because of the corona virus. The email you are talking about prefaced the donation request with “If you can.” No one tried to scare anyone.
A lot of people have pointed this out already but low-risk investment funds are a staple of any not-for-profit that intends to last in the long run. As AO3 itself clearly says, this is a move to allow them to ask for LESS money in donations and still avoid having to resort to selling ads or selling user data. This appears to have been a plan for a long time so that the OTW can establish itself more firmly as a nonprofit with a solid base. OP @zerocapitalism seems very anti-stock market and money in general, but we live in a society.
Back to point #1: AO3 “isn’t transparent with their funds.” You seem to think some mysterious owner of AO3 is pocketing leftover funds - but there is no “owner” of AO3. AO3/OTW is recognized by the IRS as a nonprofit, and is run by an elected Board of Directors. To do this, they have to submit all financial documentation to the IRS to be qualified, every year. All surplus budget must go back into the organization. The OTW’s own bylaws don’t allow for the Board of Directors to be paid.
They make a budget for a reason - so they don’t go over budget.They *should* be budgeting to spend more than they actually do. Do you expect them to spend the surplus willy-nilly, over the course of a single year?? That would be fiscally irresponsible, and they already told you where it went: the reserve fund, and the base for the long term running investment. Why do you have a problem with an organization that has yearly expenses of anywhere from $300k-$600k putting a few hundred thousand in a bank account/investment fund as a safety net? That’s barely enough for them to run for a year if they can’t take donations for some reason (and in a situation like that, they would probably have other expenses).
In any case that surplus isn’t just for a safety net, it’s also intended for projects that are larger than the AO3/OTW’s normal annual budget. If you actually read through their explanation and the budget, they’re doing a $255k server replacement this year, switching the search engine, and actually finally getting a dedicated systems contractor:
That’s a lot of money! Guess where some of it is coming from - a projected $111k transfer from their reserves (guess it didn’t just vanish, did it?):
“They only spent $11k as of February” - first of all that’s just what they’ve spent on AO3. If you add up what they’ve spent so far this year it’s at $22k,
b/c AO3 is a subsection of the nonprofit Organization for Transformative Works and they have a lot of other functions they run besides AO3! Second, a budget is not going to be spent uniformly across each month of a year. It’s just not. They have some big upgrades planned this year that will take significant chunks of money at once - and these have probably been postponed by coronavirus quarantines, so I wouldn’t imagine they’re able to actually spend money to start them.
On the whole, I don’t see where you can depict AO3 as “not transparent” when I can’t find any other similar website that actually publishes its budget? Because AO3 is a nonprofit? FF.net doesn’t publish one to my knowledge. Neither does Tumblr. Maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t find anything.
@zerocapitalism you seem very concerned with the way websites profit off of people. I too, am very concerned with this and my personal privacy. AO3 is one of the very few websites out there I know for certain is not selling my data or selling adds based on clicks (point 3). I wish there were more sites out there like them, so it’s pretty frustrating when you try and twist them into some “big bad corporation” trying to wring us for every penny we have. They aren’t profiting off of content creators, they are providing a safe and useable platform for content creators to share their work. AO3 exists the way it does exactly because of an attempt by a site called FanLib to profit off of fan-made content. Maybe you should read up on some of its history.
Edit: If you really still have beef with how they run, you can become a member and vote on their board selections, or volunteer and work up to a fire tor position yourself. You actually *do* have the ability to have a say in what they do.
tl;dr - AO3 and the Organization for Transformative Works are a nonprofit, acting in a fiscally responsible way and have lowered their biannual donation requests this year. They don’t make money off of user data or ads, and we live in a society that requires money to function.
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