Okay, Sockmonkeys, this one will be a long one,
I'm a bit behind in getting this out and some of you may have already heard about some or all of this if you saw it posted by a current or past Sockmonkey or other NaNoWriMo participant, but I wanted to post this so Sockmonkeys who don't get the emails from HQ and who may not be on Facebook or behind another social media login could learn more, if they so chose. One of the first things I saw when people were responding to those posts was "Is this an April Fool's joke?" - since many were seeing it and posting about it for the first time on April 1st, but the email was dated March 31st, 2025 at about 3 p.m. California time, so I don't believe it to be a prank of any kind.
Below is a direct copy/paste of the email that I received (although it went into my junk folder because they used a noreply address to send it, for some reason):
To Our NaNoWriMo Community:
We come to you today with sad news. After six years of struggling to sustain itself financially, NaNoWriMo (the nonprofit) will begin the process of shutting down.
Explaining how we got here is both simple and complex. The funding woes that have threatened so many nonprofits in recent years are an unextraordinary trend. Many beloved organizations announced their closure last year. Many more are fighting for their lives. Media coverage of financial crisis within the sector—especially among arts nonprofits—has been widespread.
Yet, there are ways in which NaNoWriMo is extraordinary—and reasons why we had hoped we could buck that trend. The sheer size of our community, its global reach and its longevity, held at impressive levels, even during a tumultuous year. There is no shortage of writers who want to participate in NaNoWriMo. Yet, building a community and being able to sustain it are two different matters. 2024 was a revelatory year.
In order to fully understand how we reached this decision, and why we view it as the only alternative, we encourage you to watch this video about the State of NaNoWriMo. The video also contains some important acknowledgments and information about the logistics of our next steps. Most importantly, the video shares real data and information that the organization has not discussed previously. The plot is thicker than you might think.
We recognize that the closure of NaNoWriMo represents a huge loss to the writing community, and that grief over this outcome will be exacerbated by the challenges of the past sixteen months. This is not the ending that anybody wanted or planned. And—believe us—if we could hit the delete button and rewrite this last chapter, we would. But we do have hope for the epilogue.
What’s next for NaNoWriMo, the indebted nonprofit, is much different from what's next for actual Wrimos. We hold no belief that people will stop writing 50,000 words in November (and April, and July) or stop seeking support for the journey they’re on. Many alternatives to NaNoWriMo popped up this year, and people did find each other. In so many ways, it’s easier than it was when NaNoWriMo began in 1999 to find your writing tribe online.
Our greatest hope at this moment is that you do two things: support arts nonprofits you love (they really, truly need you) and keep writing words. Your stories matter.
Thank you for all you have done for the organization, and especially for each other, over all these years.
Sincerely,
The NaNoWriMo Team
A Few Additional Notes
- We anticipate that some people might want to log on and capture information that is meaningful to them, like their lifetime word count or stats from previous seasons or challenges. We also anticipate that some folks on the Young Writers Program website may not have backed up work that they wrote directly into our system, and may wish to do so at this time. If there is something you feel you need to retrieve, you are welcome to try. However, our site tends to crash a lot when overrun with too much traffic (chronic technology underinvestment is mentioned in the video). We apologize for any inconvenience if the site gets crashy.
- If you are a recurring donor, thank you for your ongoing support of the organization (truly). We have cancelled all recurring donations on our end in order to ensure that you will not be charged as we transition into our next phase.
- If you want anything from the NaNoWriMo store, please don't delay. We will shut that down soon as well.
- Finally, we have observed that, at times of change, many members of our community are in want of spaces to process these new developments, and that, historically, we have hosted many all-community online spaces. Unfortunately, we have very limited resources to reply individually to comments or to moderate our social spaces at this time. We will do our best but make no guarantees.
Nanowrimo had been operating in the red since 2018, with a brief break in 2020-21 thanks to COVID loans. Nanowrimo tried to deal with this by boosting their merch and sponsorship income in 2023, as donations had dramatically fallen.
By October 2023, they were nearly out of money and focused on trying to organise events to deal with that. The board received the child endangerment accusations in November 2023, after the initial response in May, and launched an immediate investigation. This complaint involved spaces outside of the official forums.
They received more concerns about the Young Writers' Programme, both current and prior ones which had been dismissed. The lack of background checks for staff/volunteers, the lack of state-mandated child safety training, and lack of legal info on volunteers led to the drastic changes that have been discussed a lot here. Kilby points specifically to the lack of info they were able to supply about the moderator involved in the original complaint as a massive issue, as well as their existence as a youth-facing organisation, all meant that child safety was their top priority.
December 2023, they implemented background checks, then ended all-ages spaces and created new safety features for young writers, along with requiring educator verification.
The inconsistency of volunteer moderators in their decisions led to the forums being shut down, and how Nanowrimo had previously encouraged the existence of spaces outside the official forums (Discord, Facebook, etc.) had caused them to receive complaints about behaviour that took place outside of forums. They realised that Nanowrimo was dealing with this very badly, hence the actions the Board took.
She includes a snarky comment about how people considered themselves experts for how long they had been involved with Nanowrimo (she titles them the "you're ruining Nanowrimo camp"), but also says others appreciated the changes and a third group were horrified by the revelations and wanted the changes too. Personal opinion - this section is somewhat unprofessional in how she discusses the first group.
Kilby also says she realised that participation had been declining since 2018, which was a lot worse than the board had realised, and 2023 fundraising was $245k lower than expected. They lost nearly $200k in sponsorship income between March 2023 and March 2024 (roughly $125k by then), and merch income were a fraction of its prior levels.
Nanowrimo has to shut down, given its dire financial straits, although they're trying to keep the sites online for as long as they can - but they can't commit to moderation, tech support, etc. Kilby points out that she's been unpaid since May 2023, as have many others in recent months. They were initially in talks with merging with another writing organisation, but that fell through when they realised that Nanowrimo had six figure debt (they were largely unable to repay the COVID debt).
She also says that people were put off by the responses of people on sites such as on Reddit. Kilby tries to defend herself over the AI sponsorship issue by saying that "we turned most of them down", as they had more companies approach them after the initial scandal broke out, and that the community could've saved Nanowrimo if they funded it.
Nanowrimo being grassroots also doesn't work because they already had a very low staff to volunteer ratio (12 staff to 800+ volunteers), and running the site costs money. She blames the fact that too many members "let themselves believe that the service we provided was free" on Nanowrimo's downfall and that the vast majority of the community didn't donate. Kilby says that she isn't blaming the community, but many arts organisations are struggling, especially due to a lack of donations. She also says that "more should've been done to earn or earn back the loyalty of this community and tangibly improve our programme offering", given the six year downward trend of participation. She then thanks the MLs, mods, and other volunteers, amongst all others who worked with the organisation and community, who participated in Nanowrimo and helped the organisation be what it is.
I recommend watching the full video because I've definitely missed bits.
They also added the following edit: I posted this in another comment, but here are the pre-2018 financial info that I can find online for Nano, for comparison.
2017 - income $1.307 million ($543k donations, $322k sponsorships, $138k net merch, $168k foundations and grants, $65k events, $68k other income) and expenses were $1.197 million ($810k programmes, $298k fundraising, $89k management). 306k Nanowrimo participants and 65k camp participants, with 34k and 13k projects completed respectively.
2016 - not available on wikiwrimo.
2015 - linked but not accessible.
2014 - income $1.091 million ($482k contributions, $290k merch, $203k sponsorships, $88k foundations and grants, $25k other income) and $1.012 million expenses ($617k programme, $200k overhead, $193k fundraising). 243k Nanowrimo participants, 55k camp participants, and 40k and 9k projects completed respectively.
2013 - income $1.041 million ($481k contributions, $273k net merch, $159k corporate sponsorships, $90k foundations and grants, $35k other income) and expenses were $1.037 million ($722k programme, $159k overhead, $155k fundraising). 144k total writers but there's no number for completed projects or a Nano/camp breakdown.
2012 - income $1.009 million ($479k contributions, $273k net merch, $136k corporate sponsorships, $101k foundations and grants, $18k other income) and expenses $963k ($706k programme, $119k overhead, $138k fundraising). This also includes total assets and liabilities, which are $444k, with a change in net assets of $45k. 341k Nanowrimo participants and 28k camp participants, with no completion numbers.
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