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Introduce yourself to the group by answering a few questions:
- What’s your background (station format, years of experience, and role at your station)?
- What is your biggest pain point around on-air fundraising?
- What do you hope to gain from this course?
When you’re finished, please respond to at least three of your peers.
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1. I’ve spent a billion years in public media, starting at the Louisville stations (news/jazz at that time) where I sold underwriting, then Georgia PUblic Broadcasting (news/music at the time) where I was the assistant director of radio, which included producing the on-air campaigns, 13 years at NPR as the station relations liaison for stations the top 25 media markets, then membership work at an environmental NGO and later The Intercept, a non profit online progressive news organization, and finally back to pubmedia at WAMU in where I am the assistant director of membership and will produce the quarterly on air campaigns, among other things.
2. Biggest pain points are staffing issues (we are crazy short staffed right now), wrapping my head around all the components of my job (I started June 1), and time (I got called for grand jury duty June 15-August 19, so I’m squeezing work in evenings and weekends as I can).
3. I was fortunate to sit in on the 5 day mini-campaign three days after I started, so it was great to see how things were produced and and listen to the campaign more actively than when I was a “regular” listener. I hope to learn how to navigate the current economic situation, coupled with giving being flat to down, and the kind of messaging others are using to encourage other people to donate.
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Greetings from Richmond!
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Hi! I’m definitely looking forward to learning from your “billion” years of experience in public media! 🙂
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Hello hello!
Definitely so excited to hear about these billion years in Public Media! You got me by a few of those! I hope your transition in your new position goes well and prosperous! 🙂
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Hello! I’m Liz and I’m the development assistant at WNRN, a AAA station in Central Virginia. I’ve been with the station for over a decade in volunteer and part time roles centered around on-air fund drives, but I’ve only been in my current full time position since December 2021. I also oversee all membership fulfillment for fundraising gifts.
I think the biggest pain point around on-air fundraising is what to do for those dreadfully slow hours and how to entice lapsed members back to the station.
I’m hoping to gain insight from others on what they do during fund drives. I’m really only familiar with what we do for our drives, so an outside perspective is always welcome, especially from the pros!
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Hi Liz!!!
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Liz,
I’m interested to hear what you’ve tried during the slow hours? Have you cut out some of the on air pitches during that time or worried you’ll lose momentum/energy if you do? At WFDD, we have the same pain point and look forward to hearing what others have tried. -
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Hi there! I am Lauren Velardi, the Director of Philanthopy at WNRN, a AAA station in Central Virginia. I have been full-time at the station since April 2015 but served as a volunteer since 2011 (20+ fund drives!)
My colleague, Liz, is on here too, and I echo her sentiments around our pain points. We also have a hard time hearing from brand new folks during drives.
We’ve always conducted drives in a way that works for us, but I would like better organization and structure. Our DJs are pretty good at ad-libbing, but I would like for there to be a more robust narrative during our pitch breaks.
I am looking forward to working with everyone!
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Lauren,
I’m curious to know how much of your staff are on-air during the drives? Do you stick with just the regular hosts/DJ’s for the pitch breaks? Almost our entire staff comes on board to either produce pitch breaks or do the on air pitching. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.-
We’re a really small staff (13 full timers), so most of us are on-air, including myself and our General Manager.
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Lauren,
Our station used to ad lib our entire breaks as well, but have tightened our messaging and everyone uses conversational-sounding pre-scripted pitch cards. I don’t have a long history in radio, but my perception is that it sounds much better. Ad-libs aren’t off limits, but making sure you get through the scripted points keeps us from having rambling breaks that aren’t productive.
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Hi Lauren. I’m also at an AAA music station and still feel like a newbie when it comes to drives. I love sessions like this but I think sometimes that AAA is a different animal and a bit looser at times with pitching. I’m hoping this seminar gives me some solid info and tools to use to keep things steady, especially during those quiet times when the phones don’t ring and we all start to panic!
Cheers!
Kathleen Allard -
I’d love to learn more about encouraging more support from new members – and more structure and focused messaging. Our hosts are all very good at on air pitching and ad-libbing too, so I’m keen to learn from everyone how I can provide them with even clearer messaging so they can be as effective as possible.
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We do a special drive once a year geared only to New Members. it’s our June Member Day and we offer a challenge grant and a gift if they join at any level. Usually it’s a tshirt. With the opportunity to help unlock a large challenge and a gift we get a good response. The messaging is basically the same as every other drive, the same cases as always, but by calling out non-members it really helps. We usually see a ton of lapsed people come back too. I think by making it an event targeted only to non-members they realize today is THE DAY to make a difference because it’s just for them.
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Hi!
I’m new to public radio. I’ve been in my role as Listener and Donor Services Coordinator at WFDD since December 2021. I’ve only been through one major Fund Drive so far and have a lot to learn.It seems difficult to keep the energy going during our on-air pitch breaks as well as bring in new, first-time gifts during the fund drives.
Looking over the modules it looks like there is a lot of knowledge to gain from them as well as hearing from other participants. I hope we can learn a lot from each other during this course.
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Hi! I’m Sonsera Kiger, and I’m the Listener and Donor Services Manager at 88.5 WFDD in Winston-Salem, NC. I’ve been with WFDD close to 3 years, though I was a Fund Drive volunteer for many years before that, and also a Community Advisory Board member. My biggest pain point for on-air fundraising is having an increased goal in a time of economic uncertainty. I hope to gain new ideas about creative/successful fundraising practices that our team can utilize.
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Great point, Sonsera. Courses like this give us tried and true tools to use for drives, but then life gets in the way and leave us wondering if we need to change up how we do things, be it a pandemic, recession, national news breaks, etc. Will be very helpful to get advice on this, along with the basics. Thanks for mentioning your concern, it’s a very valid one for the year ahead.
Cheers,
Kathleen Allard WFUV -
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Hello! My name is Nora Stimpson, On-Air Fundraising Associate for KERA/KXT in Dallas, TX.
1. Our music station (KXT) is a AAA, I have been in my role for about 10 months, I moved from our Revenue Operations Team to On-Air Fundraising! I have been in the nonprofit world for about 4.5 years and public media for 2 years!
2. The biggest pain point I feel I am learning about is sensitivity to our community and outside world while attempting to fundraise; it can be tough to toggle the respect and understanding there’s a lot going on in the world but we do still need to fundraise to make sure we can bring more music, news, and interest to our fellow community as well!
3. I hope to gain more professional connections, and hearing what creative opportunities that are possible through on-air fundraising that other AAA stations are doing within their realms. Also just excited to know more about Public Media within different stations!-
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I have been in fundraising a while and at a previous job, one of our major donors (who also did fundraising for our capital campaign) told me, never apologize for asking people to be part of something great. Public media is one of the greatest things we have in a democracy, so fundraising is always appropriate. You just have to fundraise in the right way, with the right messaging.
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Hi Patton! So curious to what entails on being the Listener and Donor Services Coordinator? Sounds like a great position to where you’re close to not only your listeners and donors to see how they’re receiving and enjoying your station! Have there been any ideas or comments that your station has utilized or incorporated given from your listeners??
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Hey there!
I’m Sabrina Balch, the Membership Director for WBHM in Birmingham, AL. I’ve been here for 3.5 years, and spent 10 years at other local non-profits before joining this team. We’re a News and Information format, with classical music overnight.
My biggest pain point is trying to balance the ideal number of on-air fundraising days, but realizing that our community here isn’t going to give until the last day or two, no matter how long the drive may be. Would love to see how other stations handle this.
We’ve made our drives much more efficient in the past years, but I hope to gain some insights on how similarly-sized stations keep up their fundraising momentum and avoid burnout with a small staff.
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Hi Sabrina! I was recently at PMDMC, and I found it interesting how so many of us have such different days of the week planned for fundraising drives.
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We call those slow days, our “beating the drum” days. It may be the only sound, but at least you keep the beat going! Your listeners have to hear the message, what is it, 7 or 11 times before they take action? Something like that. So maybe that day they didn’t do anything but they heard the message. And the next time they hear it, they will donate!
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Hello Sabrina. I’m at an AAA station and we do 4 drives a year, each one runs different days. 2 are about a week, the other 1 for a few days, and 1 a one-day drive. Each year they can change the days they run based on outside factors (like holidays, or overlap with other station events that we do like our annual holiday concert in December.) On the one hand every year is unpredictable, even if we always did drives at the same time. And some years we see great results on a particular day but the next year that day fizzles. The one thing we sometimes see regularly is better results when it rains. Good weather = low donations. It will be helpful to learn how to boost things, especially on the fly. We have gotten on board with more emails. The old thought was we were bothering people with too many emails, but now we see emailing daily, and twice a day inthe final 2 days, really does have a positive impact.
Looking forward to working with you and the other co-horts in this group.
Cheers,
Kathleen Allard
WFUV Membership Director -
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I’m curious to learn about the length of drives at other stations. On the radio, we have two two-week drives in the year…one Fall and one Spring. Most of the revenue comes in the last 2-3 days, largely in response to the digital efforts that compliment the drive. My programming director and I have recently considered cutting the drive to one week, but it makes my very nervous.
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Hello! My name is Alanna, I’m a Membership Communications Coordinator at Iowa Public Radio. I over see premium fulfillments, digital communications and help plan and implement fundraising drives. We have news, classic and a music programming. I just started in this position and in public radio in January 2022. I have experienced one fund drive so far and have a LOT to learn!
A big pain point right now revolves around transitional growing pains! We have new staff (including myself) and will be transitioning to a new database before our fall drive.
I hope to gain knowledge and confidence in deciding best practices for our organization.
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Hello all, I’m Nicole Abbondandolo (you can just call me Nicole Abby 🙂 ) and I am the Director of Development at WMFE in Orlando. I have been here almost a year now, but I come from a special needs nonprofit, so public radio is a different world to me. I will also hop on the bandwagon by saying the biggest pain point around on-air fundraising is an increased goal in a time of economic uncertainty. I hope to gain some new ideas (powerful messaging, incentives, strategies, etc.) and some connections here! Our Fall drive is set for Sept 14th-23rd, so let’s do this! 🙂
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It has been so interesting to learn about all of the factors that impact pledge drive. Economy, news fatigue, COVID cycle, type of pitching (live vs spots and co-pitching vs individual) and incentives. Really looking forward to learning about all the things we can do to increase the numbers on the fly.
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Hi. I’m Kathleen Allard, Membership Director at WFUV public radio in NYC (AAA format)
I’ve been here for 4 years, and prior to that was in membership at WNET (NYC PBS station) for 12 years. I have become more involved with drives while working in my current job though, and radio is so different than television, so I’m hoping this course can help me work more effectively in my role, and with others at the station.
My biggest pain point is not fully understanding how all the different departments work during a live drive, and what can and can’t be done to “pivot” when we need to turn things around. I’m looking for tools and tips to learn how to “pivot” in the moment without tipping the boat.
I hope to get a better sense of what elements make the most successful drives. Is it the theme? Challenges? Hosts? Pairs? Are producers really needed? Covid changed how we operate and some folks don’t want to go back to the traditional ways. I’m open to change, but at what point do we decide if the new ways are better (solo pitching), or if we need to go back to old ways (pairs and producer)?
Looking forward to meeting everyone and finding building my toolkit in time for Fall!
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Hi, I’m Russell Felder, Assistant Director of Annual Giving at WKAR in East Lansing, MI. I
I have over 7 years of experience of dual-licensee membership experience.
In the past, I have worked with a template of a WARP Drive when it comes to Radio pledge drives. My station mainly focuses on live, on-air pledge drives.
I hope to get out of this course a better view of how to organize and execute a live radio pledge drive.
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Hi, I’m Kim Ishikawa, Head of Membership at KCRW in Santa Monica, California. We’re a dual format music & news station. I’ve been fundraising for over a decade but only have a few years of member station experience. There was one person who was the pledge drive director for many years and since that person left it’s been a big learning experience.
Right before I started at KCRW we switched to an UnDrive format with no live pitching, only spots, which was successful for about a year but then waned especially in regards to growing new members and sustainers. So our biggest pain point has been making adjustments for our format and figuring out what works ever since.
I’m really only familiar with how we do on-air fundraising so looking forward to hearing what works for other stations.
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Hi everyone! Thank you for being in this course and sharing a little about yourselves and your pain points around on air fundraising and what you hope to get out of the course.
I’ll share a solution for one of the recurring themes — what to do when your drive is going slowly. It happens even at the biggest stations out there!
My suggestion is to avoid playing into how slowly it’s going by instead talking about how thousands of listeners over many decades have supported your station and public radio voluntarily, and that support made possible the program you’re listening to now. We are the station we are thanks to this voluntary support and we wouldn’t sound the way we do or have the values we do with any other funding model. This is why it’s important for you to join these listeners with your monthly gift.
When we get together we will talk about how you can structure your incentives to help you through slow periods too, but it’s important to have a narrative you can lean into when you need it. It’s a good point to make when it’s not going slowly, too!
I hope this helps!
All my best,
Jay -
Hi, I’m Alexandra Castle, Senior Manager, Member Acquisition at KCRW in Santa Monica, CA. KCRW is a hybrid news and music station. I’ve been at KCRW for 4 years, which accounts for all my public radio and fundraising experience.
As my colleague Kim Ishikawa already mentioned, KCRW has spent the last few years fundraising in an UnDrive format with no live pitching, only spots and live readers. We’re working on adjusting the format with particular attention to bringing in new members, especially sustainers.
I’m eager to learn how other stations conduct their on-air fundraising and develop compelling pitches.
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Hi, I’m Jennifer Whiteside, Director of Membership at VPM (based in Richmond, VA). We are a dual-licensee station. I oversee on-air pledge campaigns for TV and radio. For radio, we operate two stations…VPM News and VPM Music. I’ve been with VPM for five years, starting first in Major Gifts. I’ve been in my current position for two years. I worked in fundraising at various performing arts non-profits before coming to public media.
Over the course of the last two years or so, we’ve dramatically reimagined our on-air pledge campaigns. We are now 100% pre-recorded, except for a small amount of ad-lip from on-air hosts on the radio stations. We like having more control over the messaging (both content and length). Additionally, we offer fewer “pledge events” on TV and don’t utilize “pledge breaks” on FM, instead opting to insert pledge messaging around our core programming. We’ve received a lot of positive feedback from our community for the format changes, but I want to make sure we are still maximizing the revenue for each campaign.
I realize our format may be an anomaly, but I’m really eager to learn from other stations during this course.
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Hello everyone! My name is Paroma, and I am the Fundraising Coordinator at WMHT, a multi-channel public communications organization. We broadcast television, classical radio, and AAA radio.
My biggest pain point around on-air fundraising is enticing people to make donations during times of economic uncertainty, as well as offering enticing thank you gifts.
From this course I hope to learn to how to identify listener motivations and values as well as write an effective on-air fundraising pitch.
I am looking forward to working with you all!
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Hello All!
I’m Rebekah. I’m the Membership Campaign Officer at WFSU in Tallahassee. My role is primarily focused on sustaining donors, and I manage the data processes associated with all of our pledge drives. I’m new to public media, but I’ve been working in nonprofit since 2013, mostly in relationship management and communications (often related to fund development).
My biggest pain point is identifying the best hosts for our on-air pledge drives. We need individuals who are well known in the community and are excited to raise money for us. But many people want to come on air to promote their own projects, or they aren’t willing to put in the work to get their friends and neighbors to donate.
I’m still fairly new in this industry, so there’s probably a lot to be gained! I hope to gain a broader understanding of the kinds of techniques or methods used in public media to get a strong donor response.
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Hello! I’m Alice McNulty, at Classical WFMT in Chicago. I am an Associate Director of Development, co-producing the on-air drives for four years now.
The biggest pain point might be continually finding new incentives for listeners to give – I’d like messaging to be at the forefront. And the length of our drives. Typically, we hold two longer campaigns per year.
I would love to learn about listener motivation, messaging that works for music stations, tips for more efficient drives, and ideas for different listener incentives.
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My name is Sarah Cassidy Hipsher and I am the Membership Manager at WFSU Public Media in Tallahassee, FL. We are a dual-licensee and a university affiliate news station. I have been producing pledge drives at WFSU for 9 years now and I don’t necessarily have a lot of pain points. We have the normal issues of slow periods and revenue slumps, but I don’t look at those as pain points, just normal hurdles to overcome.
One thing that is unique about WFSU- we use volunteers for about 90% of our live pitching during pledge drives. Tallahassee is a small town in a lot of ways, and that is the way it’s always been! It’s worked for us, so we’ve kept it that way. Usually we have a team of two volunteers for a two hour shift. Staff sits right next to them (without a mic) to help them and make sure they don’t get too far off course. Yes, they need a lot of coaching, but we do make our goals! We have a good team of dedicated people, some have been pitching once a year for decades.
I have used Greater Public as a resource for all my years at WFSU and take workshops and review webinars whenever I can. It’s been such a valuable resource. We have a new staff member, so from this course, I’m hoping she and I can work together to help make our drives even better.
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Hi, all! This is Judith Nole, and I’m the Development Director at Public Radio Tulsa, which is KWGS (NPR News/Info) and KWTU (24/7 Classical). I’ve been the Dev Dir here for seven years, but have worked in and out of public radio my entire adult life, in both news and development.
BIGGEST pain point? ***sigh*** Staffing is a big one. We have a full-time staff of only 8, and of those, only three of us pitch (with one more newbie making her debut this fall). We only live-pitch during drive time on the weekdays, and very select hours on Saturdays, but it’s exhausting. I’m very reluctant to bring in community voices, because they typically have their OWN soapbox to stand on, not ours. Another pain point: Improving our pitching. Since I began we are using much more scripting and are being MUCH more careful about planning our pitch breaks, but we still struggle to find the right mix between “quick and snappy” and actually telling a story. Looking forward to discussion about this!
I hope to get a fresh perspective on our pitch content, and to better learn how to put together pitch breaks that work and are good programming. I also hope to learn from others who support classical stations how they reach their classical audience: ours has been growing, but we struggle getting responses. Is it because these listeners are turned off by talk in general, or is it our pitching? I would love to learn ways to engage with this audience more effectively! And, of course, just basically EVERYTHING. I want to learn from all of you, and appreciate all of you so very much.
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Those of you who are moving to radio drives with exclusively pre-recorded pitch content, I would be very interested to hear how you do this, why you made the change, and how your results have compared to your results when you did live-pitching. Are you still getting the percentage of new members you want? Do you feel hampered because you can’t pitch out of a particularly compelling report/story/segment? (THANKS!)
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Hi everyone!
1. I recently joined Atlanta’s WABE as the Events & Stewardship Coordinator. Before joining WABE, I worked in commercial television for 7 years, while always volunteering for public media in different roles.
2. The biggest pain point around on-air fundraising is definitely find the right incentives to motivate our listeners and viewers to contribute to the station.
3. Everything I’ll learn in this workshop will be extremely useful, I’m new to public media as an employee and I’m open to learning everything in terms of the right strategies, current practices and tools to meet our goal of Amplifying Atlanta.
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Hello everyone,
1. I am the new Director of On Air Fundraising for WABE and I’m transitioning to Public Media from 20 years of commercial radio.
2. My biggest pain point with on-air fundraising is I am new to this. In my past experience I’ve assisted with daily or weekly campaigns for various charities, but this particular role is very new, so learning the ins and outs will take time, but I’m up for the challenge.
3. I look forward to soaking up as much information as I can. Being a new family member to public media is exciting and I look forward to learning as much as I can.
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I am Kate McKenzie, director of development for NPR Illinois/91.9 UIS in Springfield, Illinois, which is a news format. The University of Illinois Springfield holds our license. I started in this role in June after 2.5 years working in the university’s advancement division, where I did communications and marketing. Prior to that, I spent 16 years in print journalism, working as a reporter and editor for various publications in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
There are several pain points right now. The university is in the process of reducing its funding for the station over the course of the next five years (it will still hold the license and provide us our space), so there is an immediate need to increase funding from other sources. The staff is small and hiring is often stymied by the slow HR process we must follow, which allows good candidates to find other jobs before we can make an offer. For the fall drive, I also have some remaining duties from my former job until that post is filled, so I’m doing double duty through September.
I’m hoping this course will provide practical ideas I can implement for our upcoming drives, as well as find a network of people I can turn to for support and ideas.
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Ohhhh, Kate…the trials of being a university licensee! (HR, reduced funding, a job title that includes everything including taking out the trash…). I believe in you!
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1. Hi, my name is Amber Nowak and I am the new Director of Development for WVIK, NPR. We are a news and classical station. I have been with the station for 7 years. My role has been Director of Corporate Support for all but 2 months.
2. I am very new to this role and am also overseeing corporate support and major giving. I have many pain points or opportunities to learn. I am here to learn more about training new staff and volunteers on proper pitching(as we have 3 and will have more), script writing, managing slow times, drive length, how to structure co-pitching, incentives (what to offer, how to use them, where to buy them), best practices, listener/donor motivations, incorporating social media and emails, etc..
3.I hope to gain some the knowledge and confidence to guide the staff in our fall pledge drive. -
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1. My name is Brendan, and I’m the Senior Director, Member Growth Strategy at Connecticut Public. We’re a dual licensee that covers most of the state of Connecticut. I’ve been in my role for just over a year, and while I’m not new to journalism, communications, and fundraising, I’m new to public media. There’s a lot of nuance to learn1
2. Our biggest pain point right now is multifaceted, but it all centers on creating a new “core” message about our need for support and need for support as a Sustainer during a time of economic instability. Trying to bring about culture change when donors are already stressed has been a challenge.
3. I hope to learn strong fundamentals to implement in our on-air drives *and* a few items to experiment with. Connecticut Public has a need to catch-up to our peers and grow more comfortable with experiments in the pledge drive space.
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HI! I’m Christina Newton, Member Services Manager at WNRN, a AAA radio format station broadcasting across Central Virginia (and the world on WNRN.org 😉
I’m new to public radio, having joined the station at the start of the year but I hope to bring my decades of experience in the nonprofit and association sector to work to help grow the station. It’s fascinating to learn about the backgrounds and experiences of everyone here. There’s so much to learn, and I appreciate everyone sharing!I think our frustrations or questions are similar to others in handling those down times during drives, for example, and reaching new members. We have two, weeklong drives and then a few one-day drives centered around our popular programming, and I think the station has done a fantastic job in designing these. I’ve worked through one weeklong and one 24-hour drive which were big learning experiences and hope to feel more acclimated during our next.
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