I moderate a livejournal community called NaNoLJers. NaNoLJers began as a NaNoWriMo community but has grown to be active year round with writing prompts, exercises and challenges and our own month-long writing challenge Writo de Mayo in May. The community has gotten big. Right now we have 1432 members, with 948 of those members actually watching the community. That number tends to balloon in October and November, then settle back down to around what it is now shortly after.

That’s a lot of people. Many of them don’t post, but hopefully they draw inspiration from the group, just the same.

When NaNoLJers started there were only a handful of us and we were able to get to know one another and cheer each other on toward the finish line for NaNoWriMo. As we’ve grown that has become more and more difficult as names begin to blur into one another when you haven’t the time to get to know the personalities behind them. So last year I created teams on the community. The teams were optional, but the idea behind them was that with the community broken up into smaller chunks people would actually have a chance to get to know one another and that sense of being a part of a community, rather than a face in the crowd, would be preserved. In addition, the teams were competing against one another, and that sense of friendly competition seemed to help spur people on as well.

The teams last year were a rather impromptu thing and so I didn’t have much time to organise team-based events or prizes. We pulled some off, but it wasn’t nearly as organised as I’d like. We are going to have teams again this year (I’m also hoping to do something special for people who aren’t in the teams) and I’d like for it to be better organised than last year.

One thing I’m looking for is sponsors.

Last year we had a few fantastic sponsors who donated everything from books, to additional user pics or paid time on LJ. I’m looking for more people like that 🙂

If you would like to donate something to be used as prizes in some of the mini-competitions or part of the over-all prize package that the winning team will receive, please email me at rhonda@jofigure.com . Some of the competitions and prizes we had last year are listed here –> Partial List of Challenges and prizes There were also word wars and that sort of thing going on throughout the month.

What do you get if you sponsor the event? Well…gratitude. That would be the biggest thing, really. I will also link to you (or your chosen website) from the NaNoLJers page as well as the mirrored blog at http://www.poiseandpen.com . I will be sharing a list of sponsors here as well (http://rhondaparrish.com/archive plus my LJ) and I promise to rave about you on the NaNoLJers community as much as I can. Truly.

I wish I could offer more, but the group will appreciate it (I promise).

If you are willing to donate anything email me, please. You can specify a challenge you want the prize to be used for, or let me put it where it’s most needed. It’s up to you.

If you can’t sponsor NaNoLJers events, for whatever reason, I still love you 🙂