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During the pandemic, we moved to 100% pre-recorded on-air drives. The staff and our audience, as a whole, really like this new model. The spots are shorter and more concise, we don’t interrupt programming and the only staff live-pitching are our on-air hosts (for radio only). As a result, due to staff turnover, retirements, etc. over the last couple of years, we now have very few staff members comfortable with live pitching.
I’d like to resume some live pitching, especially during drive times and PBS NewsHour. I think there is an authenticity that can’t be replicated with pre-recorded spots. Our staff, including leadership, much prefers pre-recorded, scripted spots because there is more control over the messaging. I think with dedicated training, we could educate enough staff to be effective live pitchers to make the change worth a try.
As a dual licensee, we pledge television in March, June, August and December to correspond with PBS, but our pledge drives for radio are in October (2-week), February (1-week) and April (2-week). This has been done intentionally so there isn’t overlap with TV, but does make it so that we are in a pledge drive seven months out of the year.
I love the idea of having someone on the team that focuses solely on creating exclusive pledge drive content, especially with a focus on highlighting local stories!
I agree that pledge drives are an excellent opportunity to collaborate with staff across the entire organization. I’ve found it really helps build a culture of philanthropy.
How do you record testimonials from members? We’ve tried a few ways, but struggle with audio quality.
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.I empathize with your desire to engage with Sarah on the platforms she is most likely on regularly…”meet them where they are”
I agree that the messaging for the 20-30 age group needs to be different than our typical broadcast listeners. We are also trying to think creatively on how to engage this younger audience.What does your station consider a “major donor”? We are in the process of redefining this internally.
I also feel like I’m seeing the interest for premiums wane over time. In part I like that we’re moving away from transactional giving. We still see great enthusiasm for match challenges though. I think people really like to get “bang for their buck” and it feels as if they’re making double the impact…which they are!
Persona #1 – Sarah is a 42 year-old work from home mom. She is middle class, working for a local marketing firm. She volunteers for several non-profit organizations. She has two kids and a dog. She values education, her community and the arts. She likes to stay informed but absolutely loves music and the local arts scene. She really appreciates the on-the-hour news reports that air on our all-music station, so that she stays keyed in but can still fill her day with locally-curated music rather than all talk.
Persona #2 – Bill is a 68 year old retired lawyer. He is upper middle class, and spends his days golfing, playing with grand-children and fixing his car. He values his family, the truth and civic engagement. He’s been a public media fan for as long as he can remember. He listens to VPM News daily…particularly Morning Edition, watched PBS Kids with his children (and now grand-children) and never misses WWDTM on the weekends. He really appreciates VPM’s renewed focus on local news.
For Sarah, I think her giving will be more impulsive. With her busy lifestyle, she’ll respond to an email ask or ad she sees on Instagram. For Bill, I think he understands the value of the programming. He’s been a steady donor for years. He is ready to build a more meaningful relationship with the organization and should be cultivated as a Major Donor prospect.
For both, I want to make sure our pledge messaging focus on what VPM brings to the community beyond national programming from NPR, including local news reporting as we have the largest news team in Central Virginia and locally-curated music that highlights local artists and community performances.
We moved away from challenges tied to specific programming a couple years ago. Now we focus on larger themed match challenges. For a two-week radio drive, we offer 5 on-air match challenges – VPM News ($10K goal), VPM Music ($5K goal), VPM Internships ($5k goal), VPM Sustainers ($5K goal – welcome 100 new sustainers) and the Procrastinator Challenge ($25K goal). Each day of the week we focus on a different challenge. All challenges are offered on both our all news and all music FM stations.
1st Monday – VPM News | 2nd Monday – VPM Music
1st Tuesday – VPM Music | 2nd Tuesday – VPM Internships
1st Wednesday – Sustainers | 2nd Wednesday – VPM News
1st Thursday – VPM Internships | 2nd Thursday – Sustainers
1st Friday – no specific challenge promotion, allow time for FM director to forward promote | 2nd Friday – Procrastinator ChallengeAll of our match challenges are fulfilled by our Mid- and Major-level donors. Our gift officers work with their donors to solicit gifts (via email, mail, or phone) prior to the drive and request that gifts be designated to support a match challenge. This serves as a good touch point for our gift officers and our larger donors love to support the challenges. So far this has been pretty effective, but we are reevaluating how we define mid- and major gifts so we may need to reimagine this approach in the next year or so. We always report back on the success of the challenges. Even when a match challenge isn’t met (which is rare), the donors have always let us keep the funds they’d offered up for the match.
For our TV drives, we just offer one $15,000 match challenge to support news and public affairs programming on VPM. We only do a one-week drive. Match challenge funds are solicited in the same way.
Lately, almost 70% of the funding we receive during our on-drive comes in response to the complimentary email campaign, typically within the last 48 hours of the drive. Our Procrastinator Challenge is always popular.
Would love feedback on this approach. Again, as a reminder, all of our on-air pitching is prerecorded.
Planning drives around school calendars is important! We try to do the same. We also have a few local events that take a lot staff time so we try to navigate around those as well.
During our radio on-air campaigns, we offer a series of match challenges (one each day) that are anonymously built by donors in our Mid- and Major- level giving clubs. This gives us an opportunity to mention (and thank) those in the higher giving levels while also providing an incentive to give for others.
To my knowledge, VPM (formerly the Community Idea Stations/WCVE) has conducted on-air fundraising campaigns for 50+ years.
I have only been part of the planning process since stepping into the Director of Membership position in July 2020. I did not overlap with the previous director so have limited knowledge of her planning process, although I did live-pitch during campaigns under her leadership. Presently, I work closely with our FM programming director and our digital fundraising specialist to develop the complimentary components of the drive. Together, we work to ensure cohesion of theme, messaging, matching challenge promotion etc. Additionally, I work with our staff to craft messaging for pre-recorded spots.
Other elements to consider – Monthly print and e-renewals, major gift fundraising, pending capital campaign, lapsed/add-gift solicitation mailings, community engagement events and highlighting local programming.
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.
We also do spots only, no live pitching, for our drives on radio and TV. I’d love to hear more about our experience with this format.
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.
