Donors ‘stepping up’ to bolster stations after CPB funding cuts

When Louisville Public Media Development Director Ellen Oost went on air the morning of July 18 to raise funds to cover the looming loss of CPB funding, she thought the radio organization’s internal donations tracker was broken. 

LPM went live with an emergency fundraiser at 6 a.m., hours after Congress eliminated CPB’s funding for the next two years. Passage of the rescission package blew holes in the budgets of public stations across the country. 

Early morning hours of an LPM fund drive typically are “priming the pump for the rest of the day of fundraising,” Oost said, when more donations come in. That morning, however, LPM’s donation tracker, which posts funds raised across all three stations, showed listener contributions totaling $33,000 in each of the first two hours. 

“I was like, there’s no way,” she said. “… I was expecting maybe $3,000.”

“It immediately changed the tone,” she said. “We were able to go from this very dark moment to, ‘Hey, this thing happened and you all are responding because you don’t want to see what we’re delivering to this community change.’ I think that kind of set the tone for the rest of the day.”  

LPM went on to have its largest 24 hours of fundraising in its history, receiving $400,000 in pledges in the first 24 hours, which more than covers the Community Service Grants LPM was expecting from CPB next fiscal year. 

The outpouring of donations to LPM isn’t an anomaly. Public broadcasters across the country who launched emergency fund drives soon after Congress passed the rescission bill said their donors have helped soften the blow. 

KUOW in Seattle raised $1.5 million in 24 hours. WMNF in Tampa, Fla., raised about $280,000 during a one-day drive July 19. Vermont Public raised more than $1 million. Nashville Public Radio exceeded its $400,000 fundraising goal, the station shared on Bluesky. WAMU in Washington, D.C., reported an uptick in donations following the funding cuts. 

“What I’m hearing is that donors are stepping up in a big way,” said Jay Clayton, Greater Public’s individual giving advisor. The month of July generally is one of the slowest for donations to nonprofits, including public broadcasting, he noted. “When you put this fundraising and this moment in that context, it’s particularly a big response that stations are seeing.”

‘Rage-giving is very real’

LPM focused its messaging on new monthly sustainer gifts as a way to protect itself from the financial challenges ahead. 

The station also aimed its pitches at current sustainers, asking them to upgrade their monthly giving amounts. If every sustainer increased their monthly gift by $4, LPM pitched, the organization would be able to cover the CPB funding gap. 

The messaging paid off. About 1,000 monthly sustainers increased their donation by an average of nearly $14. As of the afternoon of July 21, the station had raised $527,000 from more than 2,900 donors. More than 850 of those were new members. 

“As we continue to fundraise, we’re talking about trying to insulate us from the unknown that is sure to come our way over the next year,” Oost said. That includes discussing the loss of CPB’s system support, such as music licensing and infrastructure costs that CPB has historically borne. “That’s especially what we’re talking to major donors about.”

For those stations that aren’t planning to fundraise around the CPB rescission, Oost offered this advice: “Go ahead and at least do something, because you need to kind of seize the moment as best as you can.”

LPM learned firsthand that “rage-giving is very real,” she said. “People are going to step up and say, ‘I don’t like this.’ And you don’t want to miss that moment because it’s really powerful.”

Double whammy

Florida’s stations are now dealing with the loss of both state and federal funding. 

WMNF had been planning a fundraising drive responding to the sudden elimination of state funding June 30, when Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed $6 million for public media stations. For radio stations, the veto wiped out about $100,000 in funding. 

But after final passage of the CPB rescission, WMNF pivoted to fundraise around the loss of both funding sources. Its fundraising goal more than doubled from $100,000 to $230,000.

“We found an incredible outpouring,” said Shari Akram, marketing and development director. “People were really upset, and they’ve fought back with their donations. …  If they donate on the website or when they call in, all of their comments were expressing basically like ‘We’re not going to let this happen.’” 

The community radio station surpassed its goal during a one-day drive on Saturday, raising $280,000. 

Her takeaway from that success is that “timing matters” in fundraising. There had been some debate within the station about “whether or not that amount of money could be raised in one day,” she said. “And my response was, well, that’s our funding lost, so we have to ask.”

But the fund drive was “not a permanent solution,” Akram said. “This buys us time for this year to figure out long-term solutions and work on securing those. But it at least … stops the bleed for this year.”

Despite WMNF’s pitch for new monthly sustainers, only about 20% of the gifts during the drive were recurring donations, Akram said. She’s concerned about how the emergency fundraiser will impact the next fund drive, which begins Sept. 3. 

In the short term, a benefit to the one-day drive went beyond the money — a big boost to station morale. 

“Everybody that day was amazed and felt the love of the community,” she said. “And it made you feel like we’re not in this alone. People care and people want this station to be here in this community. It matters.”

WFYI in Indianapolis, which is strategizing to replace federal funds and state support that was zeroed out in April, took a different approach. 

The station decided not to launch an emergency fundraising drive following the rescission vote, despite facing a combined budget shortfall of $2.1 million, said Stacey Stuteville, chief development and marketing officer, in an email to Current.

Since the elimination of state funding three months ago, WFYI has been in “constant and transparent communication on all platforms about funding challenges,” Stuteville said. “We have seen a substantial response from our community. We have continued with on-air messaging, digital, social and email communications. But we did not go on-air when the rescission news broke.”

“Donors are stepping up,” she said. WFYI has seen increases in all revenue categories and has gained 4,500 new members since April. The station has also grown its major giving and is “projecting that we will finish our fiscal year very strong,” she said.

Despite not going on air with an emergency drive, the loss of federal funding seems to have “further invigorated our community of donors and supporters,” Stuteville said. Still, she expects an eventual drop-off in donations. “Our biggest concern is how much of the donations are reactive versus ongoing.” 

WFYI has seen a 14% increase in sustainers compared to last year and has convinced major donors to change from annual to sustaining gifts, Stuteville said. “This is revenue we can depend on as we are budgeting for the future.” 

At Vermont Public, the dual licensee was able to raise more than $400,000 from its emergency fundraiser and over $1 million as of Friday, said Leanne Klyza Linck, SVP of development. 

The radio network pitched during All Things Considered July 18, following the rescission vote, and then again on its TV stations during Washington Week and News Hour. It also pitched for four hours the next day. 

“The response has been amazing,” Linck said.

But the public media network faces a $2 million per year budget gap with the loss of CPB funding, she said.

“We anticipate that it will take a good part of the year to raise all of this, even though we came out of the gate really strong,” Linck added. “We just don’t have a huge amount of individuals with the kind of wealth to just write a check.”

Still, the network’s development staff has been focused on major donors since May, when President Trump signed an executive order calling for CPB to end funding to NPR and PBS. 

At the time, the station contacted major donors to ask, “If we end up losing our funding, can we come back to you with an ask?” Linck said. Everyone said “yes,” so staffers are now in the process of talking with those donors. 

“We have some donors who maybe could make a really large gift, but otherwise, some we’re just asking to double their gifts.”

For now, fundraising is “going well,” she said. “But we don’t know how long it’ll last.”

Looking ahead

Even as station fundraisers are heartened by their successful campaigns, they acknowledge the potentially bumpy road ahead. After the immediacy of the CPB rescission fades, donors’ attention may move to the next emergency. 

“The loss of CPB funding is not something one successful fund drive can fix,” said Michaela Gianotti Boyle, director of marketing at KUOW, in an email to Current. Before the rescission vote, the Seattle station was working to raise $700,000 in matching funds from major donors. In less than seven hours July 18, an on-air campaign raised more than $870,000 to bring the campaign total past $1.5 million and over its goal. Half of the donors committed to monthly donations, she said.

The donations help offset the loss of CPB support, but now KUOW and public media organizations must “replace that support year after year,” Boyle acknowledged. “We are going to continue to focus our messaging on monthly giving as a long-term solution for local public media organizations.” 

KUOW’s next on-air fund drive is in September. “It will be an important test of how able we are to carry forth the urgency and energy of this moment.”  

Greater Public’s Clayton says it’s not too late for stations to capitalize on the moment. He expects the fall fundraising cycle to be a “big one,” while acknowledging he doesn’t have a crystal ball.  

“We know that our listeners and viewers care — they care a lot — and they’re stepping up in big ways to do what they can to help,” he said.

Stations need to make clear to donors and their audiences that this “is a very different moment,” he says, “and we need a longer-term commitment than we might normally ask for.”

“Remind them that this is a change for the foreseeable future and it requires a long-term solution,” he said. “Monthly giving, as important as it has become over the past decade or so, suddenly becomes even more important.”

Sustaining donors continue their support at twice the rate as those who give single gifts, Clayton added. 

“My advice to stations right now is, get [donors] as monthly givers to begin with because that’s your best shot of keeping them long term.”