Dear Rj,
While we hope you don’t feel this way, we know that sometimes our fundraising efforts are disparaged by listeners and seen as annoying and pointless.
If you would indulge me for just a few minutes, I would like to share our perspective on what we do and why.
1) We don’t “beg” for money.
- We attempt to educate our listeners about the financing structure of public radio.
- We offer our listeners a chance to lean in and participate in a meaningful and long-lasting way by giving to what’s important to them individually and to the community as a whole.
2) We don’t skip the news coverage during out member drives:
- We pause our programs for a few minutes to allow listeners to consider how important their support is to the future of public radio.
- We carefully consider the schedule of our new member drives and limit them to only 16 days per calendar year. (That’s only 16 days out of 365.)
3) We are not “greedy”:
- KJZZ receives about 60% from individual donors. Our member support is truly the lifeline of public radio.
- Our annual financials are available on the website for anyone to review. We steward our dollars closely and monitor our spending to ensure we have a balanced budget each year.
- KJZZ has an amazing and loyal audience of about 300,000 weekly listeners and we receive financial support from only about 8% of them (or about 25,000).
Yes, public radio is available free to all who want to listen and we know that not everyone is in a position to make a donation, but we hope that those who can become members, will choose to do so.
For that and many other reasons, you might have heard us on-air thanking our members for their donations and inviting the non-supporting listeners to donate.
We hope you will accept this invitation. It’s Your Turn. Become a member today.
Thank you,
Linda Pastori
Associate Vice President, Division of Public Service
Executive Director, Friends of Public Radio Arizona
Proud Sustaining Member
