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Does your station have all its team members in place? As you think more about your own station, consider these questions and post a response. Then, respond to at least three of your peers.
- Who from your station needs to be on your team? What important role does each of them play?
- Have you involved these team members in past drives?
- Are there any new additions to your team that you’ve considered?
Now that you have a plan in mind and a team to help you execute, let’s start thinking about scheduling.
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1. Almost every department in our station needs to be involved in the planning for on-air drives. Production and radio needs to ensure that our sound quality matches our normal station quality. The tech team needs to ensure that our phones and websites are running smoothly and we have backup plans in case of technical problems. Our pitch teams need to be genuine and enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the drive’s incentives, pledge levels, and theme. The host and producer also must be in constant communication with each other and various departments so that everyone has the tools they need to be prepared.
2. Yes, WMHT has nearly 50 years of on-air drive experience, so we have plenty of historical procedures to follow and data to look at. Several employees at our station have been here for many years and played a role in past fundraising drives, so they can lead others with their experience and knowledge.
3. In the past, we used volunteers for live pitching, so of course they would need to be genuine, enthusiastic, and knowledgeable about the pledge levels, incentives, challenges, and theme. However, since the pandemic we have not been using volunteers, so the only new additions to the team would be new employees (including myself) that would have to be trained on our station’s processes for on-air drives. -
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1. Everyone is involved in our on-air fund drives in some way. Of our eight staff members, three of us are experienced pitchers, and I am working with another staff member to help prepare her for pitching. These same people, plus News, record pitches that are used pre-and-post drive and during drives when we are not live-pitching. Our engineer is closely involved in the technical side. (We do NOT use a pledge producer because of our very small staff size; wish we could.).
2. Yes. It’s an all-hands-on-deck situation. ;o)
3. A couple, yes. I have been very leery of using non-staff people to pitch, because the volunteers the station used prior to me all came with their own agenda and were not focused on our listeners and our goals. I’m slowly adding in a few volunteers, as I find people who will understand their role, and who are articulate and passionate. I also hope in the future to use some of our news staff to live-pitch. We have experienced some turn-over in the last few years, and the previous news staff did NOT want to pitch.-
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We had about 20 listeners come in to record pitches and they were fantastic. They articulated well why they love the station and why others should give too. It took a lot of effort to get them scheduled but I think it’s something I plan to do in the future because they brought such great perspectives. This is my first drive, so I scrambled a bit. I’ve already started my list for the year-end drive of who we’d like to bring in to record then.
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We invite members to call in during the drives and leave us a voicemail talking about why they love and support the station. Then we package those into testimonial spots that run during the following drive. They’ve been successful because new voices tend to cut through and they give us a chance to brag without us bragging about ourselves.
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1. Who from your station needs to be on your team? What important role does each of them play?
Almost everyone on our team is involved in the Fund Drives. Some team members are only involved in the On Air pitching or producing but others are involved in Thank You gift design, sourcing and ordering. Production helps create on air promo spots. We have people creating Live Read copy, and of course our Listener and Donor services team (of 2) executing the bulk of the planning- scheduling everyone, researching the best time, communicating with our mailing house and phone company, getting the website pages ready for launch and much more. Roles range from leadership, being knowledgeable and organized to enthusiastic and prepared on air.
2. Have you involved these team members in past drives?
Yes. All team members with very few exceptions are involved in the drive.
3. Are there any new additions to your team that you’ve considered?
We have tossed around the idea of considering someone to solely look for and create fund drive content. The concept revolves around special local stories to highlight during the drives to create more interest in giving. -
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We are a small shop (radio only) and have several key positions open at the moment.
1. It’s all-hands on deck for us. We are on the backup antennae and line because the main was damaged and the replacement is on backorder, so our tech guy is crucial to making sure we stay on the air. Our news director is scheduling the pitches. Our Community Voices team is helping record pitches from some of our volunteers, who have come in and just done a phenomenal job in articulating why they love NPR. Everyone has a role it seems.
2. This is my first drive, I started in mid-June, but my understanding is drives have included everyone for the last few years.
3. I am new to this role, so that’s helping in some capacity. I have a few duties from my former job at the university that wrap up in mid-September, which are unfortunately taking up a good chunk of my time. We also have a new underwriter and I think in future drives, he could be key in securing support from sponsors/businesses. -
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Everyone at our station is involved in drives and knows and does their job well, but there’s a lot of collective experience. All of the hosts are involved in pitching with some additional staff brought in during busier times or challenges.
Our drives are all live and only staff are involved, but we do record testimonials from our members that are then played during fund drives, which provides our listeners/members’ enthusiastic perspective and become powerful tools for encouraging joining the station. -
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1. Who from your station needs to be on your team? What important role does each of them play? Pitchers, co-pitchers, producers, overall drive producer, spot/promo producer, ceo champion, marketing team (social, digital, etc), membership and development teams, and awareness and participation throughout the station.
2. Have you involved these team members in past drives? Yes!
3. Are there any new additions to your team that you’ve considered? We’ve brought in more pitchers and co-pitchers into the mix, it’s been great to hear new people on-air with different approaches to pitching.
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1) We get the buy in from our hosts and reporters, along with me and my boss, to pitch. The hosts and reporters are the friendly voices our listeners hear everyday, so it makes sense that they lead the way on the messaging front. As a producer, I give them updates as well as pitching hints to use to entice donors. I like to keep my Passport up so if there’s something we can tie in into our music shows or news reporting, we can do that on the fly.
2) Yes, though for the next drive, we’re looking to add a third member into the booth for a better diversity of voices.
3) For now, we’ll keep it to a smaller group. This is the first time we’re doing a 3 person booth.
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Who from your station needs to be on your team? What important role does each of them play?
Have you involved these team members in past drives?
Are there any new additions to your team that you’ve considered?1) We have a committee that meets weekly leading up to each drive that consists of GM, Development, Hosts, Producers, Music Director. The GM helps oversee along with Development team. Development plans the whole drive including schedule, challenges, thank-you gifts, web and call center, on air and web materials, etc. Hosts and music director give input on on air messaging and music scheduling, producers help with testimonials, produced promos. Aside from the core planning group, we work closely with member support, database team, web team.
2) These team members have been on the team for years.
3) Recently, we added another Development team member to the core group for a new perspective who is not directly involved in planning but is knowledgeable about the station and pitches on air. -
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1). Who from your station needs to be on your team? What important role does each of them play?
2). Have you involved these team members in past drives?
3). Are there any new additions to your team that you’ve considered?1. Our core team that helps within each fundraising campaign is our On-Air Fundraising team, the program director for the fundraising station at the time (TV, FM, or Music), so we can understand what programming and schedule they have for us to fundraise around. Marketing/communications so we can get a digital footprint and plan around certain drawings, etc for the campaign. But, just as Jay and Melanie mentioned we still see it as a collaborative opportunity from the entire station to help fundraise! Membership so we can make our members aware of the upcoming (or ongoing) campaign to filter any questions or needs.
2. Yes, these team members or positions have been included and reached upon for awhile.
3. I think we want a bigger net and opportunity for our station employees who haven’t helped with talent yet available for sure! We want to have a diverse group of voices on air representing the station because they ARE the station!
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Who from your station needs to be on your team? What important role does each of them play?
Just about everyone has something to do with the drive directly, and if not, they will help by hopping on the phones. We’re a small staff (14 FTE).Have you involved these team members in past drives?
YesAre there any new additions to your team that you’ve considered?
We have two newish employees in the membership department (hi Christina and Liz!), but they’ve been involved in one full fund drive, in Spring 2022. -
Who from your station needs to be on your team? What important role does each of them play?
– All of my development team (consists of me, Individual Giving Mgr and Member Services Coordinator), all of the news team, our General Mgr, Digital Mgr, Sponsorship team and Engineering. We have a Fund Drive Producer that works with us on every drive (thank goodness!).
– News team, GM, and I all live pitch
– The development team tallies the donations, sends out emails during the drive, answers calls, etc.
– Digital Manager receives all promotional images & logos and messaging to place on social media
– Sponsorship provides us with giveaways from sponsors to use during the drive
– Engineering makes sure the programs and recordings run smoothly on air
Have you involved these team members in past drives?
– They are always involved in our drives. We have pre-drive meetings to talk about messaging, theme, and overall goal of the drive, so we are all on the same page.
Are there any new additions to your team that you’ve considered?
– New Members Services Coordinator on my team, she’s still learning the overall process -
1. We engage several team members from various departments to ensure the success of our on-air drives…membership, marketing, radio programming, digital, on-air hosts, engineers, IT, off-site call center, etc. Everyone has an important role to play…Membership and radio programming work to plan the pre-recorded spots, our digital fundraising specialist builds all online donation forms, emails, social ads and complimentary webpages, our on-air hosts prep to drive the urgency of the campaign, all while engineering and IT work to ensure all operations function normally. We’ve moved away from live pitching (except for on-air hosts), but we engage staff members from all areas of the organization to voice pre-scripted spots for air.
2. Yes, everyone in organization knows that pledge campaigns are an all hands-on deck situation. Everyone is eager to make each drive a success by doing their part.
3. We are exploring new ways to capture member testimonials as we’d like to use more community voices in our drives. -
– Every department in our station touches our fundraising drives in some way. Some of the departments that are closely involved are marketing, content, and IT.
– Yes, they’ve all been involved in the past drives and I feel that more people get involved every time, which is very positive!
– Yes, we are currently seeking to fill a position for Digital acquisition. Different members of the Membership team have been covering these pieces, but we need to have one person/small team only dedicated to this.
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