Honey, I shrunk the fundraiser

For the last few decades, public radio people have needed two completely separate skill sets. For most of the year the skills relate to making quality public media programming and everything that goes along with that. But then for a couple weeks a year a whole different set of skills is required for raising a huge amount of money in a short period of time through a marathon effort behind the microphone. The changeover is abrupt enough to give one whiplash. And while we try to make the on-air fundraiser as quirky and entertaining as possible, we know that it is truly enjoyed by only a few in the audience; it is tolerated as a necessity by most, and it is a misery for some. While we feel that it is important for public media to remain firmly within the gift economy, not the pay-for-play economy, we have often wished that there could be a better way to raise the funds we need from willing donors without consuming so much of the public airtime, and so much of the energy that could go toward making great public media.

So we’re giving it a shot. This fall we have started early with short messages that do not interrupt parts of the programs you are donating to support. This is what is known as a “quiet drive.” And it is quiet, in comparison to the full-tilt yabba-yabba of the traditional six-day on-air drive. We are reaching out more in other ways, by mail and email and social media, by being more assertive on our website. Our initial hope was to be able to maybe cut one day off the on-air fundraiser, at best two. We felt that the people who give to us each year would be amenable to responding early, and that we could focus the on-air drive toward newer audience members who may not have given before.

Somewhat to our surprise, the response from you all has been very strong and fast, so much so that we have now passed one-third of our goal more than two weeks before the on air drive is scheduled to begin. It leads us to think that it may be possible to reach that goal before we ever have to interrupt programming. That would be an amazing transformation in the way we do business, and I think, a welcome transformation for most listeners. We’ll see whether it is possible over the next few days and weeks. We have set a realistic goal–$325,000–that will keep us sustainable into  the coming year, and when we get there the drive is done. If that gets done before 6 am Monday, October 20, that would be–I can only quote Steve Jobs here–“Insanely great.”

So here’s another “quiet” invitation for you to be the insanely great listener you are:

Help “shrink the fundraiser” with your gift to NCPR now.

Tags: listeningpost