Public Radio Fundraisers Dial It Back

As Listeners Pinch Pennies, On-Air Personalities Perfect the Pitch

Brother, can you spare a dime? Or, if you would like the tote bag, can you spare $35?

For the region's public radio stations, February is traditionally the time for cajoling dollars out of the listening audience. But at the beginning of what is starting to feel like a modern Depression, this year's on-air supplicants are struggling to adjust their appeals to tough times.

"People do react to certain words: credit card debt, unemployment," said Ron Pinchback, general manager of Washington's WPFW, a community-oriented public affairs and music station. "When they hear these, they have a tendency to think twice about donating. We don't have list of banned words, but we do tell our programmers to acknowledge the economy without dwelling on it."

Pinchback, who made almost daily appeals during the station's pledge drive that ended this week, said he expected the campaign to fall about 15 percent short of its $450,000 goal as listeners feel the pinch.

"We're going to have to rely less on our pledge drives and find other ways to raise revenue," he said.

Turning listeners of a free service into voluntary donors is always tricky. Broadcasters know that many in the audience lunge for the dial as soon as they here the words "our volunteers are standing by." (They also know, thanks to Arbitron ratings, that they come back as soon as regular programming resumes.)

But now hosts have to walk an even finer line between urgency and desperation, noting the financial turmoil without scaring listeners' wallets back into their pockets.

Even at WAMU, the powerhouse National Public Radio outlet that raised $1.4 million during its October fundraiser, managers say they will scrap their usual focus on high-dollar donors in a campaign that begins today.

"For years we've had $50 as a suggested minimum," Walt Gillette, WAMU's director of development. "That's out the window. It's going to be 'Every dollar makes a difference, and any dollar is welcome.' "

Last week, WAMU staffers engaged in a series of studio training sessions to practice under the watchful ears of Lettie Holman, the station's manager of programming and research and its unofficial pitch coach.

Holman started one session by explaining WAMU's long-perfected approach to pleading for money to Kavitha Cardoza, a reporter new to the staff: two announcers banter, one making "the case" (a passionate, reasoned appeal about the value of the station's programming), the other making "the close" (details on how to pledge and enough repetition of the phone number and Web site for even the shortest short-term memory).

"Remember, you are pitching to one person," Holman said. "Radio is a theater of the mind. Picture one person, visualize what they are doing and talk directly to that person. And push the credit cards."

Holman and other veterans listened from a control booth as Cardoza and Public Information Director Kay Summers riffed for two six-minute mock sessions. "That's a good pitch," Holman murmured as Summers drew a rhetorical link between the economic collapse and the need for up-to-date news.

"I say to my colleagues that I've got a future in panhandling when I retire from this business," said WAMU talk show host Kojo Nnamdi of the skills he has perfected over countless fundraising campaigns. "Prior to coming to public radio, I found asking people to give me money extremely difficult. But I've come to realize that I'm not really asking people to give the station money. I'm asking them to make sure that this thing they tell me is so valuable to them is maintained."

Nnamdi said the guiding principle of his on-air appeals is sincerity, letting the audience know that he believes everything he is saying in praise of his station.

Sincerity is good, Gillette said. But guilt is not, and he wants to ban it from the upcoming campaign, which has a goal of $900,000.

"We have some who try a guilt-oriented pitch," Gillette said. "They say, 'You're listening to the station, you ought to give.' I don't think that's going to carry a lot of weight this time."

Desperation is another losing strategy, Gillette said. "People can smell it, and the minute they think the station is in trouble, they're not going to give."

One station that has managed to ignore the hard times in its February pledge drive is WETA, which switched to an almost all classical music format two years ago. Its hosts have not pegged any of their appeals to the financial crisis, or even mentioned it, said Mary Kay Phelps, the station's vice president of membership.

"We don't talk about the economy, we talk about the music," Phelps said. "That's what we hear from our listeners. They say, 'Thank you for this music; it's a respite for me.' "

An acknowledged master of the public radio pitch is WAMU's Rob Bamberger, longtime host of a weekly vintage jazz show and, by day, an energy specialist at the Congressional Research Service. So smooth were his Saturday night appeals, which he dubs the "rent party," that he is brought in to make the phones light up throughout the week.

"This time I'm going to call it a stimulus as well," Bamberger said. "I imagine myself as a listener, and I make the case to the skeptic in me. I have fought and fought over the years about how to bring that case down to the essential issue: Why should I contribute when I can listen for free?"

The station's twice-yearly pledge campaigns have paid off for Bamberger in another way. He ended up marrying one of the phone room volunteers.