The Fundraising Challenge: Advice From a Pro

Jay Clayton has 23 years experience in radio: including 21 in public radio. His company, Jay Clayton Associates, was established in 2002 to help public radio stations and organizations make fundraising as efficient as possible both on air and off, and to develop fundraising goals and strategies that are consistent with public radio's mission and its listeners' values and interests. He created WBUR's "More Programming, Less Fundraising" program and participated in national fundraising and research projects including Audience 98 and Listener Focused Fundraising. Jay is currently overseeing DEI's Benchmarks for Public Radio Fundraising.

Talent Quest: What are the necessary basics of a drive? What needs to be said?

Jay Clayton: Fundraising is reminding listeners of the value they get from listening, getting them to agree that their direct financial support is important and makes a difference and getting them to give.

TQ: What are some common mistakes that stations/hosts/producers make in a fundraising drive?

JC: Losing sight of the fact that fundraisers are about listeners' time, not ours. Listeners tune in to stations for their core programming, not for pledge drives. At the same time, listeners understand and support our need for their financial support. In other words, they don't mind us asking them for money. Many listeners prefer that we ask them for money because they understand the direct link between listener support and editorial independence. What listeners tend not to like is how we ask for their support. Specifically, they dislike the interruptions that on-air drives create and they dislike the drives' production values (or sometimes the lack of production values).

When I review air checks of stations' pledge drives, which I do frequently, what I often hear are pledge breaks that are not focused on the fundamentals of fundraising. Some breaks go on for two to three minutes before anyone asks for money and often that request is an offer to get a station premium that isn't linked to the value of station support. In other cases I've heard pitchers focused on themselves and their commute into the station.

In some cases pitchers do ask listeners to call but they don't offer compelling reasons, from the listeners' point of view. Often the request is tied to the station's need to meet a goal -- dollars or donors -- by the end of the hour or to call because there's nothing happening in the room where volunteers are waiting to answer the phones.

Asking me to call because no one else is calling is not a winning approach. Goals have their place in pledge drives but they need to be tied to listeners' interests. For example, instead of saying help us raise another $1,500 in this hour to stay on track, try saying, our goal is $1,500 in this hour. That will pay for many hours of the program you're listening to and keep fundraising to a minimum so you can hear more of the programs you enjoy and rely on.

Some stations are beginning to see value in focusing goals on donors rather than dollars because when you focus the fundraising on listeners' participation the money usually takes care of itself. Stations sometimes have multiple goals, for overall givers and for new givers. I think this is an area worthy of more exploration because it brings listeners into the fundraiser and makes it more meaningful to them personally.

TQ: How do you define a successful campaign?

JC: A successful campaign adds contributors to the station, renewing givers, first-time givers, past givers and additional gifts from current givers. Meeting the financial goal is obviously important but building the station's base of givers is ultimately more important because that drives future giving. More donors participating in the drive, as opposed to more money from fewer donors, increases opportunities to ask for support off air which contributes to less reliance on pledge drives and more efficient drives.

TQ: You mentioned on the phone that "the issue isn't the message, the issue is the way the message is delivered." Could you elaborate on that?

JC: We know from years of solid research what turns a listener into a giver. I don't think the challenge with pledge drives is about reinventing that thinking. I think the challenge is finding fresh approaches to delivering and engaging listeners in our messages. Ira Glass has been brilliant on this stuff. His fundraising spots take the same basic messages we've used for years but he finds funny and compelling ways of getting the messages across. He tells stories and that's far more engaging than just delivering dry copy. It's hard to tell those stories day to day over the course of a long pledge drive. That's why, in my opinion, we need to keep trying and at the same time make our drives as short as possible while building our base of givers.

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