Dear NaNoWriMo Community Members,

Thank you for reaching out to us with your inquiries about the forums, your support, offers to volunteer, and your legitimate concerns.

Our inbox has been flooded, and we appreciate all of the thoughtful responses from participants and volunteers who genuinely care about NaNoWriMo, our fellow writers, and the community as we do. It is impossible to respond to each message individually, but we wanted to let you all know we are working with purpose and sincerity.

Please see below the breakdown of the work that has been done since we last shared an update with the community. Our intention is to keep you abreast of all we are doing to make NaNoWriMo a better, safer, place:

• We’ve overseen a full-scale review of business practices led by former Board Member, Kilby Blades, who has stepped in to assist the organization on an interim basis.
   
• We’ve begun to implement new procedures around community safety, including:
  • Full revision and legal review of our employee handbook and codes of conduct.
  • Full revision and legal review of our Municipal Liaison(ML) agreement.
  • Development of a formal contract agreement for all (non-ML) Volunteers.
  • Development of a stricter vetting process for all volunteers (which includes identity verification and background checks, wherever necessary).
  • Licensing of a digital constituent management system that will enhance volunteer management capabilities.
  • Comprehensive background checks for all current employees.
  • Checks and balances to ensure that standards of conduct and ethics are adhered to (e.g., better leadership training, volunteer training, tech mechanisms, and active oversight).
• We’ve made staffing changes and revised our staffing plan.
  • We have rescoped certain roles and initiated some staffing changes. (However, certain employees who left the organization voluntarily are in pursuit of their next opportunities.)
  • We believe that learning from this moment through addressing skill gaps in the organization is healthy and we will go through a hiring process to fill necessary gaps in open roles.
• We’ve listened to other community feedback and are still in listening mode.
  • We’ve disabled the mechanism on the YWP website that allows users to self-identify as educators for the purpose of creating classrooms, and we are researching mechanisms that will allow us to verify adults as educators.
  • We’ve revised our technology roadmap to address usability issues and are hoping to introduce new features in 2024.
  • We are midway through a deep dive on forums and forum moderation; this has included benchmarking with other organizations with similar challenges.
  • In February, we will hold focus groups for continuing MLs. We are also thinking through the logistics of Town Hall meetings and other gatherings.
  • We’ve processed dozens of pages of community member feedback and are integrating it into our thinking.
• With the staffing changes mentioned above, we are open to hearing from those of you who have reached out with offers to help and/or be a part of the organization’s future. 

We are excited about the future, and expect it to be brighter! We hope you feel seen and heard, and that you will stick with us as we continue supporting the writing community and our organization.

Kind regards,

NaNoWriMo Board of Directors