WUWF seeks all of the funds in half the time
- October 23, 2014
- / Louis Cooper
- / community-dashboard
For fans of local public radio station WUWF 88.1 FM, the twice-annual pledge drives are like a flu shot – a little painful, but worth the benefit.
Of course, normally, that shot has lasted 10 day. But this month, the fall pledge drive is packing less of a stick.
“We are having all of the fun in half the time,” station manager Pat Crawford said Wednesday morning as he made the on-air pitch for pledges. The fall drive has been boiled down to just five days, starting Monday and wrapping up Friday.
Crawford told Pensacola Today that the change came after considerable research.
“We increased the length of the pre-drive effort from three weeks to six weeks with increased messaging, and decreased the live drive from 10 days to five days,” Crawford said. “We anticipated that our core listeners would respond favorably to the ‘soft’ spots, particularly with the motivation of reducing the full-blown on-air appeal to five days.”
Listeners did respond. The pre-drive goal was $60,000, and it raised $59,549. That’s more than half of the $110,000 overall goal for the fall campaign.
Crawford said five days is the shortest he’s ever seen the drive.
“I've been here since 1982, and the drives have never been shorter than seven days,” he said. “We increased them to nine days in the ‘90s and then added a tenth day sometime during the last decade.”
The drive has changed as demand for funding has grown. The costs of programming have increased dramatically.
“Institutional funding from UWF has remained constant, primarily funding salaries,” Crawford said. “Grant funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has remained essentially flat, as has funding from the Florida Department of Education. We have only been able to expand our services and pay our program acquisition costs by increasing our fundraising efforts.”
Currently, half of the WUWF budget is raised from the community, including individual gifts and corporate sponsors. UWF provides 33 percent, CPB gives 10 percent and the DOE covers 7 percent.
The growing demand for funding, combined with the shaky economy, has changed the make-up of WUWF’s support.
“We are more diversified now. In the past, the two on-air drives were the main sources of revenue,” Crawford said. “Corporate support through program underwriting has become much more significant. We are encouraging more donors to make sustaining, rather than annual, gifts via (Electronic Funds Transfers). We have had significant gains in this area.”
WUWF is also using direct mail, both traditional and email, more effectively. It also participates in the Combined Federal Campaign, a program similar to the United Way for federal workers and members of the military.
The station offers various levels of suggested annual pledging, from $60 to $1,000. Crawford said the most popular pledge level is the $15 per month Day Sponsor level. That level allows the donor to have a message of their choice read on the air five times on the day of their choosing.
“WUWF members are community-minded and involved,” Crawford said. “They like the idea of using their day sponsor message to promote another nonprofit or cause that they support.”
The pledge form allows listeners to let the station know what programs they like and what programs they may have heard on other public radio stations that they would like WUWF to consider.
“We value comments and input from our listeners,” Crawford said. “Listener feedback was pivotal in our decision to change our format (from classical music in the daytime) to news a few years ago. Specific requests from listeners during our fund drives resulted in our adding ‘The Diane Rehm Show’ to our program schedule.”
“We are having all of the fun in half the time,” station manager Pat Crawford said Wednesday morning as he made the on-air pitch for pledges. The fall drive has been boiled down to just five days, starting Monday and wrapping up Friday.
Crawford told Pensacola Today that the change came after considerable research.
“We increased the length of the pre-drive effort from three weeks to six weeks with increased messaging, and decreased the live drive from 10 days to five days,” Crawford said. “We anticipated that our core listeners would respond favorably to the ‘soft’ spots, particularly with the motivation of reducing the full-blown on-air appeal to five days.”
Listeners did respond. The pre-drive goal was $60,000, and it raised $59,549. That’s more than half of the $110,000 overall goal for the fall campaign.
Crawford said five days is the shortest he’s ever seen the drive.
“I've been here since 1982, and the drives have never been shorter than seven days,” he said. “We increased them to nine days in the ‘90s and then added a tenth day sometime during the last decade.”
The drive has changed as demand for funding has grown. The costs of programming have increased dramatically.
“Institutional funding from UWF has remained constant, primarily funding salaries,” Crawford said. “Grant funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has remained essentially flat, as has funding from the Florida Department of Education. We have only been able to expand our services and pay our program acquisition costs by increasing our fundraising efforts.”
Currently, half of the WUWF budget is raised from the community, including individual gifts and corporate sponsors. UWF provides 33 percent, CPB gives 10 percent and the DOE covers 7 percent.
The growing demand for funding, combined with the shaky economy, has changed the make-up of WUWF’s support.
“We are more diversified now. In the past, the two on-air drives were the main sources of revenue,” Crawford said. “Corporate support through program underwriting has become much more significant. We are encouraging more donors to make sustaining, rather than annual, gifts via (Electronic Funds Transfers). We have had significant gains in this area.”
WUWF is also using direct mail, both traditional and email, more effectively. It also participates in the Combined Federal Campaign, a program similar to the United Way for federal workers and members of the military.
The station offers various levels of suggested annual pledging, from $60 to $1,000. Crawford said the most popular pledge level is the $15 per month Day Sponsor level. That level allows the donor to have a message of their choice read on the air five times on the day of their choosing.
“WUWF members are community-minded and involved,” Crawford said. “They like the idea of using their day sponsor message to promote another nonprofit or cause that they support.”
The pledge form allows listeners to let the station know what programs they like and what programs they may have heard on other public radio stations that they would like WUWF to consider.
“We value comments and input from our listeners,” Crawford said. “Listener feedback was pivotal in our decision to change our format (from classical music in the daytime) to news a few years ago. Specific requests from listeners during our fund drives resulted in our adding ‘The Diane Rehm Show’ to our program schedule.”
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