Stations look to turn giving boom into lasting support after federal funding loss

Public media stations are trying to sustain the momentum of a recent surge in listener support as the industry tries to steady its finances following the loss of federal funding. 

Some stations are using the moment to try to keep donors engaged with new fundraising tactics, while others are doubling down on strategies that have worked in the past. 

For stations, “there’s no definite playbook on this because we’ve never been in this place before,” said Jay Clayton, Greater Public’s individual giving advisor.  

Before the rescission of federal funding a year ago, public media was struggling to grow its donor base, according to a recent Contributor Development Partnership report. That was causing concern that “we’re not able to get more new supporters and [that] nobody’s been able to crack that code,” said Becky Chinn, principal of LKA Fundraising & Communications. 

But after the federal funding loss, the industry saw that it hadn’t plateaued but instead “found a whole new level of support,” Chinn said. Stations saw record giving, with some even raising enough to cover the loss of federal funding.  

All types of public media stations — radio, TV and joint licensees — saw double-digit percentage increases in total donors from 2024 to 2025, according to the CDP report. For radio stations, the surge ended four years of year-over-year declines.

But a boom in fundraising after a crisis often precedes a big decline when donors move on to the next emergency, Chinn said. 

“In industries that are dealing with other sorts of crises, whether they be weather crises or humanitarian crises, retention of crisis donors” is extremely low, she said. 

Whether that will be the case for public media is yet to be seen. But there are already signs of a slowdown. The May CDP index showed a decline in new donor growth for radio stations of all sizes, which “may indicate that, for the broader public, the urgency of this moment has begun to fade from view,” wrote Deb Ashmore, CDP’s analytics strategist. Yet research suggests that these new supporters may be more committed over the long term than typical crisis donors. 

In response, the system is now shifting focus to retaining donors.

“We’re all focusing on three things: retention, retention and retention — on retaining those new donors and asking our current donors to step forward with bigger gifts to continue at that new level as long as possible,” said Greater Public CEO Joyce MacDonald during her keynote speech at the inaugural Public Media Growth Conference in Chicago earlier this month.

Citing CDP data, MacDonald said that stations gained $290 million in new revenue as a result of rescission. A third of the revenue came from new donors and the remainder came from current donors increasing their giving, she said.

‘Sustainer-first’

Among the stations expanding efforts to boost giving and retain new members is Louisville Public Media, which saw significant fundraising growth last year. It had its largest-ever 24 hours of fundraising during an emergency drive following the rescission, along with elevated giving levels during its September and December drives, according to Membership Director Kelly Wilkinson.

The station grew its membership by 25% last year but saw a retreat to 2024 giving levels in its spring drive. That didn’t surprise Wilkinson.

“It would be unreasonable to expect growth to continue at the extraordinary rates that we saw last year,” he said. 

LPM pays “a lot of attention to new members,” he said. New donors receive a thank-you call from a board member, a series of emails introducing them to the station and an invitation to tour the station. 

“All those little things, those touch points, … get people more engaged,” he said. These tactics aren’t new, but the station put in extra effort to “make sure we did them all this year,” he said. “It’s easy to skip a new member tour when you’re busy after a drive, but we made it happen this year.”

The station also takes a “sustainer-first” approach to fundraising, Wilkinson said. It emphasizes donations at the sustainer level on its website and in on-air pitches. About 47% of LPM’s new givers last year were sustainers.

A few months after a welcome series of emails, new members who give one-time gifts receive an email asking them to become sustainers.

The station also started testing text messaging in December and expanded it to more members in its spring drive to ask sustainers who hadn’t increased their giving level in a while to consider doing so, Wilkinson said. The messages were along the lines of “If every sustainer increased by $4, that would make up our federal funding grant. Reply ‘Yes’ to increase by $4 a month,” he said.

The station has sent about 1,000 such texts and saw an 8% conversion rate, which is higher than email, Wilkinson said.

Wilkinson said that so far he feels good about the renewal level among last year’s new donors. The station saw an increase in giving during its spring 2025 fund drive, and renewal rates for those donors are steady, he said. 

LPM aims to attract more new members by continuing to focus messaging on the loss of federal funding. The station ran a one-day on-air campaign July 17 coinciding with the first anniversary of the rescission. The campaign drew 100 new members, which Wilkinson said is four times what the station sees on a day during a typical drive. Three-quarters of the new members joined as sustainers, compared to 65% this spring, Wilkinson said.

To try to avoid donor fatigue, the station didn’t promote the drive since it was held just eight weeks before the station’s fall drive, he said. 

The station doesn’t “intend to dwell on federal funding cuts going forward,” Wilkinson said. “It will be more of a footnote during drives. But we will keep language about protecting and safeguarding your stations.” LPM will also emphasize that the station is entirely funded by the community and that donations can help build resiliency, he added.   

A digital campaign focused on the anniversary of the federal funding loss has attracted 25 new members, but Wilkinson said he expects an uptick at the end of the month as a sweepstakes deadline nears.

‘How do I retain these donors?’

In Pasadena, Calif., LAist saw elevated giving levels throughout last year, culminating in a fall drive that was “easily one of our most successful fundraising campaigns in a very long time,” said Rob Risko, VP of development and membership.

Risko said he also noticed a “big increase” in giving from donor-advised funds over the past year. But he suspects that and other giving will decline. 

“The number one thought on my mind in the last year has been, how do I retain these donors?” said Risko. “How do I keep this momentum going? How do I turn this movement into longevity?”

The station’s tried a new tactic for its spring fund drive — aiming for 5,000 “sustainer actions” rather than setting a monetary goal. An action could be adding a new sustainer, converting a donor from a one-time gift to sustaining, or increasing a sustainer’s monthly gift. LAist used a $1 million anonymous donation as a challenge grant that would unlock only if the station met the goal.

It exceeded the goal with nearly 7,000 actions, Risko said. The drive “sealed the deal for me, that I think we do have an opportunity to move along in this new funding world with a stronger sustaining support base than we’ve ever had before,” he said. 

Now is the time for public radio to take more risks, Risko said. “I think we sometimes have a little bit of paralysis in our fundraising that we’re kind of afraid to be bold and do something that is a little different or a little innovative,” because of the urgency of raising money, he said.

Before the drive, the station also expanded its donor appreciation week in February to a month with a strong focus on reaching donors who appeared to be motivated by rescission of federal funding, Risko said.  

Throughout the month, the station thanked thousands of donors live on air with language such as “We’re now 100% community-funded, and it’s made possible by these four members,” he said. Deanna Archetto, the station’s director of membership, sent the donors audio files of the broadcast thank-yous. Staffers were also given lists of donors to call each week to thank. 

“I personally saw dozens of comments from people that we had thanked that previous month that then took action and either converted or increased their sustaining membership,” he said. “It was pretty amazing. We had folks that had given, like, a one-time gift of $100 in March of last year and joined our leadership circle at $1,500 — $125 a month — as a sustaining member” this year. 

Risko said he thinks a large number of new donors may not come back. But “converting as many of those folks to sustaining giving, converting as many of the current sustainers to upgrade their sustaining membership and converting those one-time donors to sustainers is what’s giving me the most hope right now,” he said.

The need for more staff

Chinn suggests that stations break out their donor files to speak to new members who gave because of the threats and loss of federal funding. Long-term donors likely know how to renew their gifts, but new members may not.

Stations should speak to new donors “about what they did last year and why that was so important, and why it’s important that they come along with the station again this year,” she said.

Even stations that can’t get that specific with their donor files need to keep the message that federal funding is gone “front and center,” Chinn said. But the message needs to evolve beyond signaling a crisis to conveying “this is our situation. It continues … to be a very serious challenge for our station and for the future, but we need to look towards the future. And here’s what the future looks like with you continuing by our side,” she said.  

Stations should also take “every opportunity” to focus pitches on sustainers, she added. Since the vast majority of sustainers convert from on-air messages, everyone on the on-air pitch team must be consistent about the messaging, she said. 

Clayton of Greater Public suggests that stations consider adding staff to support the new level of giving because many stations lacked resources to manage the surge in donations following the rescission. 

He says stations should look at “upside potential” of holding on to the donors. “We have to invest in the people that can help us do that,” he said. “It’s not going to just happen on its own.”

Stations should also continue telling listeners that the rescission is “a permanent change in the funding mix that we will need to address every year, and we will need listeners to stand with us every year,” Clayton said. 

Clayton said he believes public media might see a less severe drop-off in giving following the funding crisis compared to what other nonprofits have seen after crises.

“I do think there’s an opportunity to cultivate the people that have stepped up and given for the first time and try to keep more of them in the long term because it’s not a temporary crisis, it’s a permanent change,” he said. “But we have to build relationships and not just go back to them and say ‘Thank you for giving us some money. Could we have some more?’”

Not the typical crisis givers

CDP’s Deb Ashmore said that data she’s seeing about the more than 1 million new donors public media attracted over the last year indicates that the system isn’t facing a typical crisis-giving situation.

During a PMGC session, Ashmore said the number of first-year donors who made an additional gift last year doubled compared to first-year donors who made an additional gift in 2024. The percentage of sustainers making an additional gift also doubled from year to year.

“That almost never happens in that sort of traditional … crisis-giving situation,” she said. “… It’s almost always a big swell of donors, but not necessarily the increase in value.”

The other hint that these new donors don’t fit the traditional crisis-giver profile is how many joined as sustainers. 

“This is where I was shocked. This is what surprised me,” Ashmore said. “This does not happen. Typically in a crisis situation … you get a whole bunch of folks coming in making that one gift, and they’re not coming back. … You’ve had these great big increases in new donors, and a bigger share of them came on as sustainers. That is wonderful, wonderful news.”

That’s why focusing on retention is so important, Ashmore said. “The data is telling us that they want to stay,” she said.

But retaining those donors may require new tactics. Initial results of the Finding and Understanding New Donors study conducted by market research and consulting firm City Square Associates found significant demographic differences between the new donors and active multiyear donors.

For instance, the median age of the new donors is 57 versus 70 for active multiyear donors, said Chris Schiavone, City Square Associates founder and president, during the PMGC session. Of the new donors, 28% are millennials compared to 8% of active donors, while 6% of new donors are Gen Z compared to 0% of active donors. The study gathered insights into donors to 58 stations through a survey and one-on-one interviews. 

The study also found psychographic differences between the new and active donors. The new donors were just as culturally engaged as active donors but have different interests. 

“These new donors are more likely to be going to road races, state or county fairs, live comedy shows [and] food and beverage festivals,” Schiavone said. 

What this shows for stations is that these new donors “are going to require a different strategy for engagement and retention than your activists and your donors,” he said.

Schiavone said the research showed that the defunding of public media is continuing to motivate donors. The survey, which was fielded in March, found that 75% of donors said the loss of federal funding was a “big part” of why they continue to give. That indicates donors know “this isn’t a one-and-done thing, that they have to stay in the game,” Schiavone said. 

The FUND study suggested that stations may need to change how they talk about new donors. Many stations use “members,” but 51% of new donors chose the term “supporter” to describe their relationship with their station. Just 26% chose “member.”

“We think it makes a difference, because the word ‘supporter’ is conveying what people really intended by their action last year,” Schiavone said. “For many of the people who gave last year, we’re convinced they were not participating in a transaction. They were making a statement. They were supporting their own values.”