NaNoWriMo 2011 - Community Service Announcement

I just received a letter from the NaNoWriMo organisers. They are still a bit short of their fundraising goal - only by $200,000. Okay, I'm not asking for cancer research money, nor funding for a school camp to somewhere cool, that you will never get to go to, and the kids will never appreciate. I guess I'm just asking my fellow readers, writers and friends to think about chipping in a bit of money.

Think of it this way, imagine school kids around the world actually writing something that is legible (A41A14A) because of NaNoWriMo. Imagine a November were you don't receive a single tweet asking you to buy an author's book, because they are too busy doing NaNoWriMo. Isn't that worth a couple of bucks?

Dear Office of Letters and Light Superhero,
I have many things to tell you.
First off, THANK YOU. The fact that you're getting this email means you've earned the superhero moniker by making a donation to one (or many) of our programs. Because of your support, NaNoWriMo and the Young Writers Program grew again this year; we had 250,000 adults and 80,000 kids and teens in more than 2,000 classrooms writing with us. Your contributions also helped 500 public libraries transform their spaces into community noveling zones.
You inspired so many stories, and unleashed a life-changing creative confidence in writers around the world.
This has been a big year for all of our programs. We launched the brand-new Camp NaNoWriMo, and rebuilt the entire NaNoWriMo site in order to keep it speedy during November's monster traffic spike. For the first year ever, we had a year-round, full-time Young Writers Program Director to expand our free curriculum and resources for schools, and a year-round, full-time staff member dedicated to supporting our libraries and 500 volunteer-run chapters around the world.
All in all, November capped an ambitious, heartwarming, and expensive year for OLL.
And this is why I've turned on the bat signal. As of today, we still have $200,000 left to raise before we hit our organizational break-even point for the year. If we miss our fundraising goal, we won't shut down, but we will have to cut back on all the programs you so generously supported this year.
I hesitated to bother you again with a fundraising appeal; you've already done so much for us. This moment, though, is such a crucial one for the future of our programs that I'm asking you to please consider making a donation to the Office of Letters and Light today.
If you've already given all you can this year, we understand, and we're so grateful to you. But if you can make an additional donation, even a very small one, it will have a huge impact on the lives of the 400,000 writers we hope to inspire together in 2012.
Warm regards,
Chris
Executive Director
The Office of Letters and Light
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