“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”
fundraising
Just sayin’.
We’re drowning in a river of words: blogs, emails, text messages, tweets, comments, speeches, oratory, rhetoric, verbal engineering, commentary, and spin, spin, spin. Sure, we contribute our fair share right here on Scanning the Dial, but our contribution to the torrent hopefully sets just the right tone, is just clever enough and feels just right. *wink*
There are good words, hate words, and comic words. When you think of good communicators, who comes to mind? President Obama? Jesse Jackson? Jon Stewart? What kind of words tend to capture your imagination? Depends on our mood and needs, doesn’t it.
Kicking the tires of philanthropy.
To give or not to give, that is the question.
Not-for-profit radio stations around the country are entering into the spring fund-raising season, facing the same challenges as last year and the year before that, and the year before that. The perennial challenge is engaging the listener in a conversation about the relevance of the station in peoples’ lives and the need for voluntary contributions to cover the station’s expenses. There’s a cause and effect dynamic at work. Programming causes listening, good programming causes loyalty, loyalty causes giving. In theory. Is that all there is to it, do the best we can with creating content and then ask for money – and we shall automatically receive?
“In this economy”
If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a hundred times, “We’ll be lucky to achieve our goals in this economy”.
We’re all in the same boat, this challenging economic boat – in the doldrums yet relatively secure, generally insulated, and comparatively safe – not untouched mind you, but our lifestyles are barely altered – we’re afloat. We may be thinking greener, driving less, recycling more, watching household expenses, packing lunch, eyeballing boxed wine for the first time and generally curbing our consumption but at a pace that could be characterized as a stroll. No real urgency.