Less-talk radio: a local non-profit radio station puts human nature to the test for the sake of fundraising

South Florida CEO, Jan, 2008 by Robin Shear

When Miami-based National Public Radio affiliate WLRN-FM (91.3) tried to raise $825,000 in just five hours plus five days of on-air pitching this past October, the accelerated pledge drive missed its mark. But Friends of WLRN, the fundraising organization responsible for pulling in a significant portion of the station's annual budget, did not consider the experiment a failure.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"We didn't quite make our goal this last time, but the goals were very high," explains Rick Lewis, who has been president of Friends of WLRN since 2004. Plus, he adds, unlike the usual 10 to 12 day marathon pledge drives the station has traditionally produced twice a year, "It was successful because it was relatively painless."

WLRN set out to take some of the pain out of pledge drives in 2006. Armed with audience research, a professional consultant and a bit of faith in human nature, it hoped to increase fundraising by significantly shortening on-air pledge drives. "It's really based on the knowledge that people hate pledge drives--listeners, staff, everyone," laughs Lewis, who has worked in public radio most of his career. "Long pledge drives ... drive away a large portion of the audience."

John Sutton, president of Maryland-based John Sutton & Associates, a public radio consultant whose clients include National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, helped the station reengineer its outreach. "The typical pattern in public radio," Sutton says, "is that as budgets grow, so do demands and lengths of [on-air] fundraisers. And every so often stations need to recalibrate their efforts because fundraisers can get so long that they begin to experience diminishing returns. And that was the situation WLRN was in."

According to 2005-06 public audit figures provided by WLRN, its annual budget is $5.4 million for radio and $10.8 million for cable television. The first time the station tried Sutton's new strategy, in the fall of 2006, it raised $811,000--$11,000 above its $800,000 target--in just four hours plus five days. In the spring of 2007, it raised $720,000 against a $775,000 goal. This past fall, in 2007, it bumped up the goal to $825,000. By the time the pledge drive ended, the total raised was $804,000, including about $55,000 raised during a couple of pre-Thanksgiving "power hours" that had to be scheduled beyond the originally advertised period.

Does that suggest a struggling strategy? "You're stretching and trying to raise $825,000 in five days," Sutton says. "But because you didn't meet the goal, people tend to look at it as a failure as opposed to [looking at] the trend line. I don't know how you get better if you don't stretch."

This point is not lost on Lewis. "The fascinating fact about these three campaigns taken as a whole," he says in an e-mail, "is that we raised $2,335,000 against a total goal of $2.4 million--leaving a shortfall of just $65,000 or 2.7 percent. We did that in half the number of days as prior years, leaving a much happier audience and markedly improved prospects for making up the difference, and more, off-air, through direct mail, where costs are lower and margins greater."

Lewis says WLRN's delivery of the message has changed, too. Rather than "the tradition where bells are ringing and people are cheering" during the on-air drives, he says WLRN, under Sutton's guidance, has moved to a more business-like approach: "For example, we say we will pay NPR more than $800,000 this year for the programs we broadcast. People can relate to that--it's about paying the bills."

Sutton does not think WLRN was underperforming in terms of fundraising. The station's "Circle of Friends" membership program "is quite impressive compared to a lot of other stations." he says. "But in the end you want as broad-based support as possible."

Based on trends that James Lewis, of Portand, Ore.-based Lewis Kennedy Associates, is seeing in public radio and television these days, WLRN seems to be on the right track. "To the extent that WLRN, or any other organization in South Florida, is providing a variety of communications options to its constituents, it is meeting their needs.... The downside is that [multidimensional approaches] have made fundraising much more complex than it used to be."

Stephen L. Goldstein, host of a weekly radio show called "Fundraising Success" on South Florida National Public Radio member station WXEL-FM (90.7) and CEO of Fort Lauderdale-based Educational Marketing Services Inc., says, "Obviously any compression of time away from the program is desirable." But he cautions, "The real basis for success in fundraising is building relationships.... It's not just standing on a corner saying 'give me money.'"

So far, the accelerated on-air drives seem to be creating new relationships. "We [acquired] thousands of new first-time members over the last year," Lewis says. Over the past two years, he adds, "our total number of members has increased by just under 20 percent." Revenue is on the rise too. Combined revenue for WLRN television and radio was $16.6 million for 2006, compared to 2005's $14.7 million, according to public audit figures Lewis provided.