WSHU is reinventing public radio pledge drives from 30 Days to just 5

WSHU is reinventing its pledge drives. Instead of 30 full days of on-air fundraising we are planning just five in the coming year.

How can we do that? Only with your help. Please read on.

We believe your time is valuable and we strive to spend as little of it as possible asking for money. Over the years we’ve come up with ways to shorten fund drives only to have other circumstances such as reductions in federal funds and decreased business support in a slumping economy cause us to make them longer.

Every time we do shorten fund drives you respond in a big way. Our recent 1-Day Thursday pledge drive is a good example of this. And everyone loves the Newman’s Own Foundation 1-Day Challenge.

We think these 1-Day drives could be the future of on-air fundraising at WSHU.

We are planning just five full days of on-air fundraising for WSHU’s upcoming fiscal year, which runs from July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2010. The drive dates are below. The make-up dates show when we will come back on the air to make up for any shortfall, should one occur.

We are leaving a full week between each 1-Day Drive and the make-up dates to give us a chance to meet the goal with emails and short on-air announcements soliciting Web donations.

Please note that even if we have to use all of the make-up dates you would still hear only half as much fundraising as in the past. And far less of it would be during the news. But, we’d rather not use the make-up dates at all.

On-air fundraising accounts for a little less than half of the money WSHU raises from listeners. The majority of listener contributions come through direct mail, email, and personal solicitations.

One way you can help make 1-Day Thursday a success is by giving off-air before any fund drive. The more money WSHU raises off-air, the lower we can set our on-air goals.

The budget plan for this year calls for WSHU to raise $1.1 million through on-air fundraising. The goals for each 1-Day Thursday are shown below.

Why is the June goal so much lower? Summer fund drives tend to get lower results for the same amount of effort and June 17 is just 13 days away from the end of WSHU’s fiscal year. WSHU has raised $71,500 in a single June day several times thanks to the Newman’s Own Foundation Challenge. It is an appropriate goal. Planning on more would not be prudent.

The goals for each 1-Day Drive will be adjusted up or down as the year progresses based on how closely results track with planned goals.

WSHU is planning on just five full days of on-air fundraising. There may be occasions when WSHU broadcasts short fundraising specials on the weekends. These specials will not last for an entire day and they will not interrupt your news programs.

One of those specials is an experimental fundraising collaboration with our national network program providers— NPR, PRI, and APM. This project is called The Best of Public Radio and it is designed to help stations get more contributions and raise more money with less effort and better sounding fundraising.

There will be occasions when WSHU will broadcast short on-air announcements with offers to contribute to the station and get tickets to special events, such as a live performance by David Sedaris. The announcements will be broadcast during regular breaks in programming and will not pre-empt any program segments or music.

There’s not much room for The Stuff during 1-Day Drive, so the number of challenges will be limited.

WSHU will continue to offer some thank you gifts on our Web site, even if you don’t hear about them much over the airwaves. Suzanne Bona will continue her tradition of offering an annual holiday CD to Sunday Baroque listeners. And as mentioned above, we will continue to offer tickets to select special events. None of this, however, will create additional interruptions in your programming.

Now that you’ve seen the plan, what do you think? Do you have questions or feedback? Please let us know. We need your help to make this work. And if you’re ready to give now, please click here to make a secure on-line contribution.

Thank you.