Two membership programs built around popular children’s podcasts are bringing in new donors for New England–based public media stations.
A new membership program for Vermont Public’s But Why debuted at the end of last October.
Since then, the But Why Fan Club had brought in 109 unique donors by the end of August, with 79 totally new to Vermont Public, said Katie Miller, director of membership.
“We’re all trying to navigate this new, ever-evolving digital landscape,” Miller told Current. She added that podcasts have been a “hard nut to crack.”
Miller also shared details about the But Why Fan Club at Greater Public’s annual Public Media Development and Marketing Conference last month in San Diego. She presented as part of the session “The Uphill Battle for Donor Acquisition: Strategies for Success.”
One of the programs Vermont Public looked at while creating its club was the Circle Round Club out of WBUR in Boston. Based around the Circle Round podcast, which gets more than 1.4 million monthly downloads, the club launched in April 2023, said Tina Safford, a fundraising manager at WBUR.
“We realized we had fans writing in from around the country and around the world and really wanted to create a program to engage with them in a meaningful way,” Safford said.
The Circle Round Club gets about 100 new members every month, according to Safford. The program currently has more than 1,600 families in six countries and 50 U.S. states and territories.
WBUR is happy with the Circle Round Club results, said COO Deb Taylor, and has also made adjustments.
“We learned a lot,” Taylor said.
The Circle Round Club started with three tiers, Safford said, but has since changed to one $8-per-month level that includes benefits such as bedtime stories, a Circle Round Club T-shirt, weekly activity emails and ad-free listening.
Like Circle Round, Vermont Public’s But Why also has a wide reach.
Vermont Public tried the new podcast membership program with But Why first because its audience doesn’t overlap as much as its other podcasts do with the station’s existing membership.
But Why’s monthly downloads are in the mid–six figures, but Vermont and part of upstate New York only make up about 1.4% of its downloads, according to But Why host and EP Jane Lindholm.
The But Why Fan Club has different levels of support, starting at $7 a month. All of the levels receive a monthly activity newsletter; a welcome kit with a patch, bookmark and stickers; and 20% off merch from the But Why store.
A $10-per-month level also gets members a But Why book and access to quarterly virtual meet-and-greet events, while a $15 level gets those perks and a $25 credit to the merch store.
Miller said the station remains mindful that children are listening to the podcast and is careful not to sell to kids. The messaging is focused on their parents, including in the preroll before the adults walk away.
She hopes the dual licensee will eventually have fundraising initiatives for all four of its regular podcasts, even if they don’t necessarily follow the same model as the But Why Fan Club.
“Things like this give me hope that if we continue to experiment and grow with the times, we might be surprised by what happens,” Miller said. “If we don’t evolve, and we don’t experiment, we won’t figure out how to sustain ourselves.”