Dreaming Our Future

“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”

I’ve been called one. It hasn’t always been a compliment: head in the clouds, unrealistic, hopelessly romantic, impractical, out of touch. You know the type. If you’re Irish, you can blame it partially on your genes.

Being a dreamer means an active imagination often spurred on by the mundane but especially the hard stuff, difficulty, tragedy, threat and what appears to be hopelessness. Why do so many comedians come from troubled or abusive homes? For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Out of personal tragedy comes those fantasies and dreams that make us whole again, help us to see the way out, and preserve our sanity. Last year’s presidential election has left “Yes we can” ringing in my ears. Think about what caused that phenomenon.

For us in public radio, the “Newt years” of the 90’s produced or resulted in a greater accountability to our audience and a correlating amount of financial independence, albeit modest. We finally took a hard look at our programming and radio realities and started connecting the dots. Loyalty increased and revenue followed. In many cases, the dreamers and entrepreneurs led us.

What strikes me though is the short distance we traveled and how little we’ve really evolved. I’m mainly talking here about fund-raising and our membership drives. Is it enough to have merely 10% of our audience engaged financially with us? We walk and talk like we have arrived, we’re long in tooth and experienced, but all around us the landscape is changing dramatically. I fear that if we don’t actively imagine our place in this new media world, and act, we’ll slowly paint ourselves into a corner that we abhor, or risk becoming irrelevant. I love this quote: If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.

Remember, audiences are becoming less and less tolerant of commercials which seems to put a check in our column (yay for our team) but our membership drives are essentially 10 day station commercials, barely tolerable in the way we do them and horrific to the 90% who don’t yet contribute.

Here in Portland we just completed a planned 10 day membership drive in 11 days, 13 if you count the quiet weekend interlude before mopping up on that Monday. Yes, we exceeded our goal, raising close to a half a million dollars, which is fantastic, but the goal was and is – as always – based on a subsistence existence – just enough. We’re not-for-profits, right? It’s as much a mindset as it is a fund-raising realty.

We seemed to get real traction with the “great conversation” concept with our community. The response was fairly dramatic and edifying. I’ve never seen this amount of really constructive feedback on so many topics. We launched an aggressive re-design of the programming schedule and spent the drive rolling it out and chatting about it, and asking what do you think? Normally one wouldn’t do it around fund-raising, when so much is at stake nor would you involve the audience so directly. Status quo is – just do what we feel is best for them – current Arbitron PPM data not withstanding. If we’re talking engaging the silent 90% who listen but don’t give, and we’re talking concepts like stewardship, greater service and philanthropy, we must truly be more transparent – off and on our air. If it’s real behind the scenes, with staff and board, then we have a better chance to achieve authenticity with that vast sea of potential stakeholders.

Finally, the concept of dreaming and imagining what is possible was also broached with our listeners, as in here’s what we can imagine doing if we had increased support, if we had your money, in addition to saying what would you like to see happen? Be careful what you ask for and be prepared to handle the input. Our drive ended on Monday and I’m at the station on Saturday still answering listener emails. One by one they are coming on-board and becoming ambassadors for this rare all classical, listener-supported, music station. Big dreams, small steps.

What are you seeing at your station? What new ideas are you implementing behind the scenes, through direct mail, in the community and through your stakeholders? How is spring fund-raising going?

Share if you would!

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us…

And, help imagine a better future for our stations!

Onward.

Sláinte.