Three Things Datebook for the Week of 3/14/2022
This week the Datebook takes note of the "Coordinated Fundraising Week" and CDP's State of the System 2021 Webinar. Also, Let the Sunshine INN and Smart Tech for nonprofits.
THING ONE: This is Membership Week - On Air and Off
Have you ever Googled “Public Radio Pledge Drive?”
Since the “Coordinated Fundraising Week” for NPR member stations starts this Saturday, for some crazy reason, I went down that rabbit hole. I found a treasure trove of material around public radio and television’s efforts to raise money on the air from listeners and viewers.
My search started with Wikipedia (of course, they would have a post on pledge drives):
A pledge drive is an extended period of fundraising activities, generally used by public broadcasting stations to increase contributions. The term "pledge" originates from the promise that a contributor makes to send in funding at regular intervals for a certain amount of time. During a pledge drive, regular and special programming is followed by on-air appeals for pledges by station employees, who ask the audience to make their contributions, usually by phone or the Internet, during this break.
Pledge drives are typically held two to four times annually, at calendar periods which vary depending on the scheduling designated by the local public broadcasting station.
In true Wikipedia style, the post details the “controversy” that pledge drives annoy viewers and listeners, who find the regular interruption of what is ordinarily commercial-free content and the station’s regular programming being suspended for lifestyle and music specials to be a nuisance.
My search then took me to a 2013 post on the NPR website by Megan Johnson, then of NPR, and now at Spotify. The story’s headline was, “Not Another &#@*$! Pledge Drive,” which continues that nuisance theme from Wikipedia. The post sought to show various ways through videos that stations survive on-air drives with dancing, yes, lots of dancing, and other attempts that are, um, interesting to watch several years later.
The WDET version of this is also on YouTube, and there’s a WBEZ thank you video that is, well, one to be seen. This is all an effort to have a little fun - perhaps even a little too much fun.
Public radio alum Melody Kramer has also collected a bunch of pledge drive videos and public radio parodies on a single Pinterest page because … well … The Internet.
And then there’s other news outlets and their take on the pledge drive.
The Riverfront Times here in St. Louis did a somewhat brutal but pretty funny take several years ago with its version of the public radio pledge drive drinking game:
Drink every time:
Announcer explains how, even though St. Louis Public Radio is free to listen to; it’s not free, free
A morning host says how much Diane Rehm loves it when people from St. Louis call in to her show
Announcer mentions “driveway moments”
Ira Glass lays on the guilt trip, threatens to call you at home
Finish everything in your NPR mug if Ira Glass actually does call you at home, then retracts his previous guilt trip and apologizes.
It’s mentioned that the station has just two fundraising campaigns a year rather than three, so you can enjoy more of its in-depth reporting about warlords and bees
Someone throws down a “challenge” to raise a wholly unrealistic sum of money before the end of the hour (i.e., $2,700 in the next twelve minutes)
Two drinks if the challenge is sponsored by a doctor or a law firm
Announcer notes that it costs $35 to become a member of St. Louis Public Radio, but many people choose to give more
Finish everything in your glass if announcer coolly suggests donating more than $100 a month
You hear the words “sustaining” or “cornerstone”
In 2009, Slate’s June Thomas offered a list of public radio’s ten most effective fundraising strategies that include many of the tactics (or cliches) that you still hear during a lot of pledge drives.
These include “The guilt trip,” “We’re here for you—now be there for us,” “Only you can save journalism,” “The match game,” and “Stop me before I pitch again,” which she explained as:
“The last day of a campaign is the best time to listen, and not just because it's almost over. The staffers are so slap-happy, they start to mangle the phone number they've repeated thousands of times, and the unintentional comedy that results can be highly entertaining.
At the tail end of a weeklong pledge drive, station staff members are at their loopiest. (The backroom staffers, who only appear on-air during pledge drives, seem to get particularly punch-drunk in the final days.) Yet smart stations turn even this cabin fever to their advantage—public radio listeners are sensitive people, the thinking surely goes, perhaps they'll take pity on these poor souls and call in a pledge to spare them further embarrassment.”
As snarky as these pieces are, they are also, in many ways, love letters to public radio for doing what it does every day to inform and entertain millions of Americans.
As stations head into the coordinated week of on-air pledge, recent data shows that it’s becoming more challenging than ever to bring in new donors to replace the average churn that happens with station membership rolls.
To help give stations a snapshot of how the membership landscape looks across public radio and television, this Wednesday, March 16, 2022, at 2:00 pm (Eastern), the Contributor Development Partnership (CDP) will present its “State of the System 2021” webinar.
In a preview to the webinar, CPD is reporting that the 2021 calendar year ended on a positive note, with giving for the last quarter of the year showing an overall revenue increase of six percent.
These results are based on the membership giving data from 173 public media stations that submit data to CDP’s National Reference File (NRF).
The positive 4th quarter growth was consistent across station types. Stand alone public television stations showing had the best results with an eight percent increase followed by a 5.5% increase for joint licensees. Public radio stations ended the period from October through December 2021 with a 4.7% increase.
For the full 2021 calendar year, CDP says that giving increased 5.4% across all stations compared to 2020.
Public televisions stations, thanks in large part to the continued success of PBS Passport, experienced an increase of nine percent last year while joint licensees saw 5.1% growth over 2020.
However, public radio’s results were not so robust with a slight YoY decrease of -0.2% in 2021. This lack of growth is even more worrisome when you add in that inflation at the consumer level grew at a 7% pace in 2021.
There’s much more to unpack with Wednesday’s session, and I encourage you to check it out. The session is free, and you can register at this link.
One more note, there are still a lot of stations across public radio that are not submitting their data to CDP’s National Reference File. This means that this critical tool to track individual giving in “near real-time” across the industry is not being fully utilized.
In addition, by submitting the data to the NRF, your station will receive CDP’s Revenue Opportunity & Action Report (ROAR) free of charge. The ROAR helps analyze a station’s membership program using 31 key fundraising metrics.
THING TWO: Let The Sunshine In
What is your organization doing for Sunshine Week?
This is an excellent week to honor the work of investigative journalists in their efforts to hold public officials accountable.
Actually, every week is a good week to celebrate this kind of work, but, since 2005, the News Leaders Association1 has designated this week in March as Sunshine Week, described as a “national, nonpartisan effort to highlight the critical role of open government and freedom of information at the local, state, and federal levels.”
For news organizations, this is the perfect time to discuss the importance of openness and access to government records with your audience.
And for this year, it’s more important than ever to discuss the need for government transparency as attempts are happening in states across the country designed to make it harder to access public records.
In a commentary published on Sunday in The Eagle-Tribune in Massachusettes, Justin Silverman, the executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition, wrote that the ‘sunshine’ reference is from “U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis who famously wrote that “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” In other words, an informed citizenry is the best check against government corruption.”
Silverman adds that “the idea behind state public record and open meeting laws, as well as our federal Freedom of Information Act. Government transparency is a non-partisan principle that transcends who’s in office or which political party is in control. Freedom of information or “sunshine” laws open up government and empower people through information.”
Silverman’s New England First Amendment Coalition is a terrific resource for “all things FOIA” with a Freedom of Information Guide designed for journalists and others citizens.
The National Freedom of Information Coalition (NFOIC) is another great place for news organizations to turn to for assistance regarding filing and getting access to public records. This week they are sponsoring two webinars as part of Sunshine Week.
Today (Monday), March 14, 2022, at 2:00 pm (Eastern), Lam Thuy Vo, a data journalist in residence at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, will present a session on “Igniting Inspiration: Bringing Data to Light and to Life.” This free webinar will focus on FOI & data possibilities and the accomplishments of this work via scraping and reporting using FOI requests.
This is a free session, and you can register at this link.
Then on Wednesday, March 16, 2022, at 3:00 pm (Eastern), an expert panel will cover the basics of making open records requests, how to deal with denials, and how to present data in ways that engage and empower the public. The panelists for “Sparking Discovery: Using FOI and Big Data to Tell Stories, Build Community, and Solve Problems” include:
David Cuillier, NFOIC board president and University of Arizona associate professor;
Grace Cheng, director of government practice, practical law, at Thomson Reuters; and
Ashlee Fujawa, co-founder and head of community of Uncovered, a cold case platform, and NFOIC partner.
This is also free, but you need to register here.
The NFIOC is funded by several foundations committed to supporting journalism and the First Amendment, including The Knight Foundation and Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, and is located at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communication.
Another organization committed to supporting journalism is the Institute for Nonprofit News. The INN is a membership organization made up of independent news organizations with three things in common: 1) They are nonprofit, 2) They are nonpartisan, and 3) They are dedicated to public service.
INN members range from covering local news to global issues ranging in size from large (i.e., ProPublica) to small newsrooms covering topics in neighborhoods, cities, and states.
Of the 360 INN members, about 30 of them are public media organizations. And if you operate a newsroom at your station, now might be a good time to consider becoming an INN member.
As an INN member, you get access to many resources and tools to help your staff and your organization.
This includes editorial collaborations such as the 2020 collaborative project about climate change in the Great Lakes region. The “From Rust to Resilience: What Climate Change Means for Great Lakes Cities” series included a dozen pieces published or broadcast in the spring of 2020. The project was part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative and included several public media organizations2 as part of the partnership.
The INN also hosts numerous events (webinars, training opportunities, etc.) throughout the year, including the annual INN Days that will be held from Monday, June 13 to Wednesday, June 15, 2022, at The Westin Alexandria Old Town in Alexandria, VA. The conference will be a hybrid event with both in-person and virtual experiences.
Members of INN also get to be a part of NewsMatch, the annual collaboration between newsrooms, funders, and industry experts designed to strengthen the fundraising capabilities of nonprofit newsrooms and promote giving to journalism in the U.S.
Since 2016, NewsMatch has helped raise over $150 million for INN members. Through NewsMatch, participating organizations (INN members) will have designated individual gifts of up to $1,000 matched between November 1 and December 31.
There’s a cap on the amount of the match at around $30,000 per organization, but it’s a great way to bring in new donors for a specific initiative or a day like Giving Tuesday.
But, you have to be an INN member to participate and, if you’re currently not an INN member, you need to apply for membership by April 15, 2022, to be eligible for NewsMatch 2022. The INN membership dues for most public media organizations will be $500 for budgets between $500,000 - $1.999,999 and $1,000 for budgets of $2 million or more. But again, those dollars are returned several times over by being a part of NewsMatch.
Here are more details about INN membership.
THING THREE: Using Smart Tech to Reimagine Nonprofit Work
In the November 18, 2021 edition of Three Things, I wrote about a $3 million initiative from The Knight Foundation to help local news organizations capitalize on the untapped potential of artificial intelligence.
On November 29, 2021, I also shared some of the details of the Journalism Ai Festival hosted by Polis (the journalism think-tank at the London School of Economics and Political Science) in collaboration with the Google News Initiative.
I’m seeing stories about AI and journalism nearly every week explaining either the promise of machine learning or the potential ethical concerns accompanying the technology.
The same is also true for the nonprofit sector, as efforts are initiated to use AI to approach problems and improve the lives of people around the world.
Google’s AI for Social Good is an example of this globally.
This work has helped organizations quickly and accurately forecast where and when floods may occur, build an open data repository of COVID-19 research, and help people with atypical speech be better understood with Project Euphonia.
To help the nonprofits better understand how “smart technology” might help streamline their work, The Chronicle of Philanthropy is sponsoring a webinar on Wednesday, March 16, 2022, at 2:00 pm (Eastern) titled “Smart Tech: How to Use AI and Other Advances to Meet Your Mission.”
The session will feature a conversation with Allison Fine and Beth Kanter, authors of the new book, The Smart Nonprofit. In the book, Fine and Kanter use the umbrella term “smart tech” to refer to technologies like AI and its subsets and cousins, such as machine learning, and natural language processes. These technologies automate internal systems and processes, meaning they make decisions for (and instead of) people. Turning over this much decision-making power to tech tools has never happened before.
The authors believe that we are at the inflection point when an enormous increase in computing power meets a dramatic decrease in the cost of the technology. As a result, smart tech is becoming available and affordable to everyday people and organizations.
Fine and Kanter suggest three ways3 that smart tech can be used to shift organizational culture:
Invest in online chatbots. Chatbots are the fastest-growing use of smart tech by organizations, and many platforms exist to build them without knowing how to write computer code. These online conversational bots are best at answering the same questions over and again. “Is my donation tax-deductible?” “Are you open on Monday nights?” “Where are you located?” Using chatbots relieves staff from constant interruptions from these types of questions.
Improve workflow. Workflow bottlenecks are enormous sources of inefficiency and frustration for staff. Unfortunately, many nonprofits don’t have the resources to hire administrative assistants to schedule meetings and track project deadlines. Smart tech is beginning to fill these gaps. For instance, the international humanitarian organization, OxFam, created “OxBot,” to help employees decode the endless acronyms used in their work, saving employees an enormous amount of time. “Intelligent virtual assistants” can schedule meetings without the back and forth that even a tool like Doodle involves by regularly cruising through files, correspondence, and calendars.
Focus on physical health. Smart tech can support physical safety and health by monitoring environmental risk factors, tracking worker health indicators, altering job profiles and ways of working that improve physical health, and nudging workers to healthy habits and behaviors. For example, smart tech can encourage work-life boundaries, and encourage employees to move, take screen breaks, and stretch. It’s good for workers and organizations to keep everyone healthy.
Writing in The Smart Nonprofit, Fine and Kanter believe that smart tech will help workplace cultures focus on what we call healthy productivity: more meaningful work in less time. Maybe four-day work weeks are possible. Certainly, more vacation time is warranted. And planned sabbaticals for staff at every level should become the norm as a benefit for long-serving staff. Most importantly, using smart tech well can help staff end their days with a greater sense of satisfaction that comes from knowing their efforts are meaningful and help recruit and retain staff in the face of the Great Resignation.
You can register for this free webinar at this link to learn more.
How is your station or organization using effectively AI to streamline activities, operations, and systems? Feel free to offer your thoughts in our comment section.
That’s the Three Things Datebook for this week. Thanks for reading.
In 2005, the News Leaders Association was known as the American Society of News Editors.
Six INN members were part of the collaboration: Belt Magazine, The Conversation, Ensia, Great Lakes Now at Detroit Public Television, MinnPost, and Side Effects Public Media. Other partners are WUWM Milwaukee, Indiana Public Broadcasting, and The Water Main from American Public Media.
These suggestions originally appeared in the Candid Blob.