Archive of Our Own ^beta

Now that the 2025 election is over, we're happy to share with you our voter turnout statistics!

For the 2025 Election, we had 15138 total eligible voters. Of those, 2197 voters cast a ballot, which represents 14.5% of the potential voters.

Our voter turnout is lower than that of last year, which had a turnout of 22.8%.

We also saw a decrease in the number of ballots cast, from 3415 to 2197, which represents a 35.6% decrease.

Elections is committed to continuing to reach out to our eligible members to encourage them to vote in elections. Whoever is elected to the Board of Directors can have an important influence on the long-term health of the OTW's projects, and we want our members to have a say in that.

For those who might be interested in the number of votes each candidate received, please note that our election process is designed to elect an equal cohort of Board members in order to allow them to work well together, so we do not release that information. As a general rule, we also won’t disclose which of our unsuccessful candidates received the fewest votes, since we don’t want to discourage them from running again in the future when circumstances and member interest might be different. However, as there were only 3 candidates this year, revealing that information is unavoidable.

Once again, a big thank you to everyone who participated at every stage of the election! We hope to see you at the virtual polls again next year.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

The Elections Committee would like to thank all of our candidates for their hard work in this year's election. We would also like to thank our departing Board Directors, Jennifer Haynes and Zixin Zhang, for all their work during their Board terms. With that, we are pleased to present the results of the 2025 Election.

The following candidates (in alphabetical order) have been officially elected to the Board of Directors:

• Elizabeth Wiltshire
• Harlan Lieberman-Berg

The new members of the Board will formally begin their term overlap on October 1. We wish them well with their terms.

With that, the election season comes to a close. Thank you to everyone who got involved by spreading the word, asking the candidates questions, and, of course, voting! We look forward to seeing all of you again next year.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

The election has opened!

Every OTW member who joined between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025, should have a ballot by now. If you didn't get one, please check your spam folder first, then contact us via our contact form. If you are unsure whether your donation was made before the deadline, please contact our Development and Membership Committee by using the contact form on our website and selecting "Is my membership current/Am I eligible to vote?"

The election will run through August 18, 2025, 23:59 UTC; check this time zone converter to find out what time that will be for you.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

At this time, all members of the OTW who are eligible to vote should have received an email linking to the voting instructions for 2025. The subject line was "Voting Instructions for Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) Board Election". Please note that anyone who didn't receive this email is not on the voter rolls this year and will not receive a ballot.

The voting instructions email contains a link to a test version of the ballot. Please follow that link to make sure that the page displays correctly and the candidates are visible. If not, please ensure you are not blocking JavaScript from ajax.googleapis.com, bootstrapcdn.com, and/or opavote.com.

If you are an OTW member and didn't receive this email, please do the following:

1. Check your spam folder.
   • If you use Gmail, check your Social tab.
   • If the email is marked as spam, unmark it. Otherwise, you will not receive your ballot, as it will end up in spam as well.
2. If no email is present, open your donation receipt and check the date.
   • To vote in this election, your receipt must be dated between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025, inclusive of both dates. Receipts are dated in UTC. Please check your receipt for the date of your donation. You won't be eligible to vote if your donation was made after midnight UTC on July 1.
   • If you paid by check, your membership is measured by the arrival date of the check.
3. If your donation was made during the eligible time period, make sure you checked the box to become a member. Membership is voluntary for those who donate at least $10; only members can vote.
4. If you did become a member, make sure you neither marked any email from the OTW as spam nor opted out of OTW emails or last year's ballot. If you did so and would like to vote this year, you'll need to follow step 5 below.
5. If you donated at least $10 during the eligible period and you checked the box to become a member, please fill out the Elections Contact Form and select the topic "Is my membership current/Am I eligible to vote?" Make sure to include the email you used when donating.
   • Membership has no connection to being a user of AO3 or Fanlore. Please don't give us your AO3 or Fanlore username – we have no way of knowing who that name belongs to, and we don't want to know.

Most importantly, if your voting instructions email bounces, gets marked as spam, or you opt out, you will not receive a ballot for this year's election, and you may not receive a ballot next year. Similarly, if any of those things happened to last year's election emails, you will not receive a ballot this year. Therefore, if you previously opted out of OTW emails or marked them as spam and would like to vote, fill out the Elections Contact Form and select the topic "Is my membership current/Am I eligible to vote?"

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

The election season is in full swing! As part of the election season, we have a chat with our candidates coming up soon. You can also find links to the candidates' answers to your questions at the bottom of this post.

Chats

There will be one public chat with all three candidates that will last 90 minutes. Chats will take place in our public chatroom (Discord).
It is scheduled for:

• Saturday, August 2, from 21:00 UTC to 22:30 UTC – Live chat with all candidates (What time is the Candidate Chat where I live?)

During this chat, chat attendees will have the opportunity to ask the candidates questions not already covered in their platforms, bios, and Q&A, as well as to ask individual questions of specific candidates. New questions will only be accepted for the first hour of the scheduled chat time to make sure candidates have time to finish them all.

We hope that you can join us for this chat!

Please note that though the link to the public chatroom is already active, chatting capabilities will not be enabled until approximately half an hour before the chat begins.

Read on to learn more about using Discord.

• On the login page, you'll need to provide a screen name.
• Once you enter the server, you'll find a list of users on the right and a list of chat rooms on the left. Settings are available via the gear icon on the lower left, near your screen name; there you can choose, among other options, whether you prefer a dark or light chat room appearance.
• There are three rooms available to chat attendees who are not candidates or Elections Committee volunteers: general, candidate_chats, and open_chat.
  • General is where you'll find a list of rules for the chats. Please read through these carefully before entering the other two rooms.
  • Candidate_chats is where the candidates will answer questions and debate amongst themselves. Only the candidates and moderator will be able to chat in this room.
  • Open_chat is where all attendees can participate and talk to each other. We ask that you try to stay on topics related to the election. A moderator will be in the room, so if you have a question for the candidates, you can signal the moderator with o/, the candidate's name, and the question. Use o// if it's a follow-up question to the current discussion.

Q&A

When we posted the Board candidates’ bios and platforms, we asked the public to submit additional questions for them. Once again, our sincere thanks to everyone who did so! We have already posted candidate answers to Q&A questions.

To navigate answers by individual candidate, please use the links below:

• C. Ryan S.
• Elizabeth W.
• Harlan L.B.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Candidates Announcement

The Organization for Transformative Works is pleased to announce the following candidates for the 2025 Election (in alphabetical order by given name):

• C. Ryan S.
• Elizabeth W.
• Harlan L.B.

Because we have 2 seats to be filled and 3 candidates, the 2025 election will be contested – that is, the members of the OTW will vote on which candidates fill the seats. The Elections Committee is excited to introduce the candidates to all of the members of the OTW! Included in this post are links to short Bios and Platforms written by the candidates. This post also marks the beginning of our Q&A period, during which we invite the public to submit questions for the candidates. Additionally, we will be holding a series of live chats – dates and times for those are to be announced based on candidate availability. Information on the voting period and how to vote will also be posted shortly. In the meantime, there is a timeline of Elections events available here for your reference. Read on to learn more about our candidates and how you can submit questions for them!

Platforms and Bios

We asked each candidate to provide us with a Bio that sums up their professional and fannish experience, as well as to write a Platform about their goals for their term on the Board by answering the following questions:

• Why did you decide to run for election to the Board?
• What skills and/or experience would you bring to the Board?
• Choose one or two goals for the OTW that are important to you and that you would be interested in working on during your term. Why do you value these goals? How would you work with others to achieve them?
• What is your experience with the OTW's projects and how would you collaborate with the relevant committees to support and strengthen them? Try to include a range of projects, though feel free to emphasize particular ones you have experience with.
• How would you balance your Board work with other roles in the OTW, or how do you plan to hand over your current roles to focus on Board work?

You can read both the candidates' answers to these questions and their bios by following the links below.

• C. Ryan S.
• Elizabeth W.
• Harlan L.B.

Question & Answer (Q&A)

To better accommodate the time constraints of the election and the workload for candidates, we are asking voters to limit to one question per message. Additional questions in the same message will be discarded. Limit of three questions per person. Anyone may submit questions via the Elections form. Please submit all questions by 11:59pm UTC on June 29 (what time is that where I live?). All candidates will answer each question submitted, subject to the following restrictions:

• Questions must be a maximum of 50 words long.
• Any submitted questions repeating what is already addressed on Platforms will be ignored. This is to allow candidates to dedicate more time to answering new questions.
• Similar questions will be grouped together to avoid candidates giving repetitive answers. Elections volunteers will decide which questions are similar enough to group.
• If you have a follow-up to a Platform question, please specifically mention it is a follow-up so Elections volunteers know not to treat it as a repeat.
• One question per message. Additional questions in the same message will be discarded.
• Maximum of three questions per person.

The posting date for answers will be chosen depending on the number of questions received. Posts will be spread out, arranged by topic, to make it easier for voters to read all the answers.

The OTW Elections committee is pleased to announce that the timeline for the 2025 election for new members of the Board of Directors has been posted!

As previously announced, Zixin Zhang stepped down from her position on the Board. Jennifer Haynes is also stepping down from the Board as she has reached the end of her term. There are 7 Directors on the OTW's Board and this year OTW members will elect 2 new Directors to serve 3 year terms on the Board.

This year's election will be held August 15-18. This means that the deadline for volunteers to declare their candidacy is June 20.

As usual, the election membership deadline is June 30. If you're interested in voting, please make sure your membership is active as of that date. If you are unsure whether your donation was made before the deadline, please contact our Development and Membership Committee by using the contact form on our website and selecting "Is my membership current/Am I eligible to vote?".

You can find out how to become a member on the Elections website, or if you're familiar with the process, you can donate here!

If you want to know more about the election process in general, you can check out the Elections Policies.

We're looking forward to an active election season with ample communication between candidates and voters, and we hope you'll be a part of it. Don't forget to follow the Elections committee on Bluesky and Tumblr to keep up to date with the latest news!

If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to contact Elections.

Now that the 2024 election is over, we’re happy to share with you our voter turnout statistics!

For the 2024 Election, we had 14959 total eligible voters. Of those, 3415 voters cast a ballot, which represents 22.8% of the potential voters.

Our voter turnout is lower than that of last year, which had a turnout of 27.8%

We also saw a decrease in the number of ballots cast, from 4247 to 3415, which represents a -19.6% decrease.

Elections is committed to continuing to reach out to our eligible members to encourage them to vote in elections. Whoever is elected to the Board of Directors can have an important influence on the long-term health of the OTW’s projects, and we want our members to have a say in that.

For those who might be interested in the number of votes each candidate received, please note that our election process is designed to elect an equal cohort of Board members in order to allow them to work well together, so we do not release that information. As a general rule, we also won’t disclose which of our unsuccessful candidates received the fewest votes, since we don’t want to discourage them from running again in the future when circumstances and member interest might be different.

Once again, a big thank you to everyone who participated at every stage of the election! We hope to see you at the virtual polls again next year.

EDIT: 30 August 2024 15:30 UTC Post title edited for clarity.