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?
As we’ve touched on before, roughly 8% of our audience choose to support their favorite public radio station. Some stations enjoy less support and some more. The point is, and this is huge, that approximately 92% who listen make an active decision not to give. They don’t forget to give, they avoid giving, assiduously. So, pardon the pun, but what gives? Or, if you’re in development, you may be saying, “Does anyone give a damn and if so, will you please give now?”
We must consider the root causes of financial non-participation and address them head on, with humor, grace and creativity. We must be smarter at asking smart people to part with their money.
You can bet a larger percentage of our listeners are involved in some sort of charitable and philanthropic giving. This begs the question, again, what are we doing that is perhaps causing someone to turn off a membership drive or shove their wallet deeper into their purse? Don’t laugh. Drives needn’t be mind-numbing experiences for our staff and our listeners.
Look at your audience. What do they need or want when they tune in? You can bet it’s the same as when you choose a listening experience:
- quality
- relevance
- authenticity
These are interesting qualities, almost universally applicable to all things we hope to acquire in life: experiences, relationships, and stuff.
A person is going to kick the tires on our organizations before they become investors. They listen, they contemplate, they evaluate our arguments, they weigh their listening experience, and they choose. If they listen long enough (research tells us that folks typically listen somewhere around 3 to 5 years before moving from passive listening to active giving) and if we’re good enough, they’ll try on a little ownership for size. This is no small matter. It is really an act of faith. Even a first time gift of $25 comes with some trepidation. Is it going down a rat hole? Will they use it to play more of X that I don’t like? Once the gift is made, a more discerning and curious ear inclines towards the speakers.
I believe, and tell me if I’m wrong, that the key to solving this conundrum of giving or non-giving, by so many already in the fold, is understanding the connection between a) quality and loyalty, b) making the clear distinction between charitable giving and philanthropy, and c) addressing head on the concerns for better stewardship and greater accountability.
Classical music radio makes communities better. Period. No argument. Listeners know this and they feel it. Talk to that part of their experience. Appeal at that level. Ask them to invest in quality. Ask them to invest in the future. Ask them to become future founders. Perhaps they weren’t here in the beginning when the station was launched, but they’re here now and can make a difference for the future with their gift.
We must have a very clear vision for the future and be able to explain just how we’ll use their donation to get there. It is not enough to say, “Just imagine what we could do if everyone listening right now would call and give!” We must know precisely what we would do if they called right now. Don’t be afraid to talk about money and growth potential, much needed repairs, better services, new technology, staff benefits, more Mozart, all of it. Figure out what’s best and right and articulate it, everywhere.
There’s a brief feel-good component based in empathy and even sympathy in a one time charitable contribution. There’s long-term satisfaction and a benevolent component to a philanthropic investment in bettering a station and thereby society. True investors, the wealthy donors we seek, know this and that’s why they think in terms of endowment building as opposed to cash flow management gifts.
Finally, we must be better stewards of those precious resources and talk to our benefactors in a transparent way about every aspect of what we’re doing and how we’ll leverage that wonderful, tax-deductible gift they just made, that investment in a stronger radio station and a better tomorrow.
An old proverb we all know says, “Give a man a fish, feed him for today. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.” I’ve seen it said, “Charity is for today; philanthropy is forever”. Albert Einstein said it even better, “The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.”
The 92% may not respond over night, but if we don’t get started with changing our attitudes and approaches, they’ll never change their attitudes and responses.
Onward!
Subscribe Via Email
Enter your email address to subscribe to Scanning the Dial and receive notifications of new posts by email.
Thank you for subscribing.
Something went wrong.
Jack, this is a topic that NEEDS discussing. I’ve been letting your comments percolate for a couple of days because I can’t understand why the numbers are so out of whack.
Classical radio allows people to get beautiful music whenever they want it, day or night, FREE. They can hear whole concerts from the great orchestras without paying $100 for a ticket, $30 for a babysitter, and another $100 for dinner.
When I go to a concert, I pay a lot of money for a ticket that isn’t tax deductible. I pay more to drive and park. And when the presenters tell me that my ticket price only covers half of their expenses and ask for a donation, I usually give them one, especially if the concert is good. Then they send me a letter in December, and I give them more.
It’s almost like a contract between the organization and the audience members. We know they’re going to ask now and then — briefly! — and we respond.
I don’t know what percentage of the audience donates. Maybe it’s only 8% like it is in classical radio.
But the model for classical stations is so different. Like the arts orgs, classical stations get about half of their operating costs from the listeners. But they have a HUGE advantage over those organizations: classical stations have the power of the airwaves to ask for money. The arts organizations would love to be able to do that.
On the other hand, like the internet, radio has always been given away free (although satellite radio is changing the paradigm slowly).
When I go to a concert I won’t get the music for free, and yet I still choose to buy a ticket. Maybe I value it MORE because I’ve paid for it. Maybe I value it more because I get to be in the same room with the artists.
Classical radio could do better at forging a contract with its listeners. The station gives out wonderful music and interesting commentary and then wants the listeners to respond with monetary appreciation. But when you get on the air for a week at a time and beg, it’s a monologue, not a conversation. One whole half of the dialogue is missing.
My personal feeling is that listeners hate the begging. I know it works, but it hurts the relationship in the long run.
On the other hand, if you show up where your listeners are and meet them in person and develop an actual relationship — or develop a friendship by email or Facebook — that might change the equation. It sure worked for President Obama.
So, basically I agree with you that donors need to be engaged and cultivated, but I disagree with HOW. The conversation is already one way on radio, and more explaining is just more talking AT the listeners instead of WITH us. After explaining on the air why you need my help, I hope the whole staff will get out of the studio and go out into the community and to concerts and listen to the listeners.
Thanks for the note, Marty.
If you’ve read all my blogs here on Scanning the Dial, you’ll see that I have specifically emphasized precisely the same points.
At previous stations and here at All Classical in Portland, we call our drives The Great Conversation because we don’t just ask for money, but rather feedback, pros and cons, to boot. We open the phone lines 3 times a year (a total of 25 days out of 365) and ask the listener to join the conversation. We read the comments on air.
I’ve stressed here in writing and with my staff that many of the answers we seek lie within our audience and therefore we must build better bridges of communication in order for them to reach us with good ideas. We must be better listeners as opposed to purveyors of content with fingers crossed, hoping that we’ll please. Audience interaction isn’t just important, it is critical for our future.
All Classical is better at community engagement than any station I’ve ever seen. Our hosts, in spite of long hard weeks making radio, get out and emcee events every single week throughout the year. Even so, there’s limited bandwidth emotionally, physically and financially for us to send staff into the community. It’s exhausting for them. We do it, but the more efficient business model is to use our big megaphone to share the right messages, better messages, in addition to appearing face to face.
I do hope to have some town-hall type meetings twice a year starting this summer. Find locations around the region where folks can come and ask questions and share ideas. We really enjoy our Community Advisory Council that comes to the station every quarter and provides feedback on everything under the sun. We also do multiple open houses at the station and set a new record in early December with attendance.
The conundrum remains, though, 8% of our 190,000 give to the station and 92% sit on their wallets. This is of course system wide and a phenomenon that must be addressed differently and solved. Portland is an excellent market to experiment in.
Drives aren’t going away. Radio is what we do. So, we absolutely must be smarter and more sensitive to how we use those precious hours throughout pledge drives – to inspire and motivate the silent 92%.
Finally, our pitches through direct mail are getting better all the time. We had an historic high return on our end of year appeal in December. Obviously, off air fundraising must be superb and play a more vital role in the whole process. I personally must do more private fundraisng. With one of our hosts by my side, we just did a donor event in a private home with about 25 people. It was extremely effective. More of those are in my future. If they are done right, each attendee becomes a mini-ambassador for the station. If we are transparent and clear on our needs and the ways we’ll spend donor funds, on air and off, we have the potential to make all those listeners ambassadors, too.
We just had an off-site dinner and brainstorming meeting tonight with almost our entire staff to discuss these issues. I believe we’ll do a better job this February 24th through March 5th than ever before. I hope you’ll tune in. You might be inspired!
Thanks again for the comment.
Great article Jack. We should all be constantly thinking and re-thinking of how we raise money and convince the listener that we are worth a monetary investment.
For our upcoming spring drive, we are going to try a new format that is primarily host driven, rather than relying on the typical host/co-host model. We will have a few guests (local arts leaders) drop in for 1-2 hours to provide community perspective. Our is to make the drives more about the listener, increase our focus and hone our message. The conversation should always be between you and the listener, and the host/co-host turns into a chit-chat session that annoys most people.
And like you’ve said (and Marty has, as well), community involvement is CRITICAL. It’s not enough for us to sit in our insulated (literally and figuratively) studios playing music and pretending to be friendly, and then ignore our audience in public.
But that takes work and effort, right? 🙂
Sorry, quick edit:
These guests only appear on a couple days, not constantly through the drive.
“Our GOAL is to make…”
Well said, Daniel. Good thinking on your drive. I like it.
Yes, the rub with the two-host model is it can be exclusive of the intimate and personal relationship the listener normally enjoys with the one familiar host – and, it can sound too inside baseball at times. It can be done well or badly, there doesn’t seem to be much middle ground.
Ideally, a good-cop, bad-cop scenario can be played out with the two host model with variations on sharing the case/close pitch, always bringing it back to the ONE you want to reach.
Done well, a two host pitch team with excellent chemistry can really sound like a fun conversation the listener actually wants to participate in, resulting in the call…and the gift. Couch it in those terms, as in “Phone lines are open! Join the conversation. We want to hear from you. This is YOUR time to talk back to the radio. We hear you!” If the phone volunteer is trained well, you will get a gift with each of those calls.
Good luck! Let me know how things go.