Inspiration for Your Station’s Public Media Giving Days Campaign
When I joined CDP, one of the things I was most excited about was helping expand public media’s impact by helping stations fundraise in new and exciting ways. So, when I heard about an idea that my colleagues conceived, Public Media Giving Days (PMGD), I was immediately taken in. A giving day event specifically for public media? Yes, please!
Recognizing the opportunity a national advocacy fundraising campaign like this could have, I immediately put on my station hat and began thinking of all the strategies and tactics that would make PMGD a success. And to see the campaign embraced by more than a hundred stations last year in partnership with Greater Public, NPR and PBS, raising over $800,000 from people across the country, was truly inspiring.
The real kudos go to the public media organizations—each one of you that was willing to try something new, even if you were in a pledge drive or facing a fiscal year end gap. Taking a risk is never easy but doing it with the support and collaboration of a hundred other station colleagues somehow makes it feel easier. That’s why I want to shine a spotlight on some station success stories from PMGD 2023 and exciting new station plans for PMGD 2024.
To help get you thinking about your station’s PMGD campaign plans for this May, Vermont Public, PBS Reno and WUCF share what’s worked for them and what they want to build on this year.
Katie Miller, Director of Membership, Vermont Public
Vermont Public is a joint licensee station serving news and classical radio listeners, television viewers and an array of other digital audiences through podcasts and newsletters.
Last year, PMGD fell between Vermont Public’s spring radio drive, which happens in March, and the end-of-year fiscal drive in June, also on radio. On TV, we pledge year round, so those efforts were not impacted much by PMGD.
When this opportunity first presented itself, we knew we wanted to do something, but weren’t sure how much to do. There were concerns that an email or social-only campaign might not be as fruitful if we used some (or all) of our broadcast channels. We assembled the drive planning team and presented the PMGD opportunity. That group said, “If we’re going to do it, let’s really do it!” This meant instead of spots and live reads, we would go live on radio during PMGD. Part of our motivation was that at this time last year we were significantly behind revenue projections, so we used PMGD as an opportunity to make up some of that gap.
We promoted PMGD across all channels, including social media, email and digital placements on our website, including a pop-up. We ran spots leading up to and on the day of on television, news radio and classical radio. We also produced a suite of pre-rolls on our podcasts, which ran for the week prior and through PMGD.
On May 2, we had people pitching live all day on both our news and classical radio stations. We coupled the day-of effort with posts on social, email asks, and website pop ups. Our pitches and spots focused heavily on welcoming new donors. There were lots of, “If you’ve been waiting to make your first gift to Vermont Public, now is the time!” That paid off, resulting in nearly half of PMGD donors being new—191 donors or 46% of the total donors. The average gift was also higher at $93 compared to our typical $65 average gift during on-air radio drives.
Something that worked well were pre-rolls on our podcasts tailored specifically to the audience of each podcast and written in the voice of the host. We also took some time to record member and listener testimonials, which we wouldn’t usually do fresh for a one-day drive, but we were able to use them again during the subsequent June drive.
Last year, we offered a pack of stickers to each gift over $5. Like many public media stations, we have tens of thousands of stickers just hanging out in the office. This was a great opportunity to offload some of those stickers and give something to donors that helps them share their love of Vermont Public with others. Additionally, we have patches for each of our podcasts, and those were made available to folks who donated in response to the podcast pre-rolls. People really loved them! We had to send out over 400 envelopes of stickers, which sounds like a lot, but we hosted an in-house stuffing party, and the staff all said it was fun. (Hot tip: Offer them candy, and they will help!)
This year, we plan to lean more heavily on digital strategies. We’re hoping to do peer-to-peer fundraising, expand pre-rolls to the PBS Video app and incorporate a postcard to people who donated last year during PMGD but haven’t given since.
Samantha Harris, Director of Membership, PBS Reno
PBS Reno is a relatively small station in size. We have 38 employees, a development team of ten people including a membership team of three. Last year, PMGD brought in 200 donations and about $5500, which was huge for us!
We leveraged PMGD as an opportunity to build an integrated campaign, promoting it across digital channels and broadcast. A week before the campaign, we ran :30 and :60 spots focusing on advocacy, and the day before the campaign we switched to, "Today is the day to give and participate,” messaging. Like our Giving Tuesday campaign, we had lower thirds that ran intermittently throughout the day with donation information, including a QR code and our phone number. We are also part of the digital pilot that allows local interstitial content on PBS streaming video and included a :30 PMGD spot there.
We featured PMGD on our website and linked to a campaign-specific donation form. Paid social media was part of our strategy in addition to organic posts. We also included the PMGD information in our monthly e-newsletter which went out the week before. Our monthly e-newsletter has a 55% open rate, so it is one of our better emails to get promotions out in front of people. In addition to our email campaign, we also participated in an outbound texting campaign.
This year is PBS Reno’s 40th anniversary, and we’re very excited about the opportunity to expand PMGD. We've begun planning for it in tandem with our March membership drive so we can have very clear messaging around each campaign. With it being our anniversary year, we’re going to invoke feelings of nostalgia through testimonials from longtime employees, former staff that worked here when the station started and members that have been supporting the station for many years. This content will frame the idea that long-term advocacy turns into donations and financial support.
We’ll be increasing our social footprint for PMGD this year as well. We have fun plans to do some things on TikTok and Instagram reels to gain more interaction with our social followers and beyond. And we have a very popular Murder Mystery Dinner event that sells out each year. We’re saving two tickets to use as a giveaway—anyone who donates during PMGD will be entered to win the last pair of tickets!
Evan Valle, Membership Manager, WUCF
WUCF is a relatively young joint licensee station in a rapidly growing city. For a brand-new fundraising event, we were thrilled that PMGD brought in 80 donations totaling over $8,000 last year.
With the first year under our belt and with more time to prepare for PMGD 2024, we’re looking forward to building upon the event and making the campaign more familiar to our donors. Considering the oversaturation of GivingTuesday and the rise in giving days across the nonprofit industry, our station would like to see the growth of PMGD as a national movement to support a larger shift of giving to this campaign moving forward.
This year, we’re looking forward to engaging with our members on a much more personal level. Embracing PMGD as an integrated campaign, we’ll be extending the reach of the campaign in person through station tours. We’ll be bringing donors behind the scenes to tour our studios and station which will culminate in a “yard sale” of WUCF premiums at the end. After all, we live in the home of Disney and Universal where you must exit through the gift shop!
We’re also planning to roll out a “value of a $1” campaign to all current sustainers during PMGD. This effort will encourage sustainers to increase their monthly gift by $1 or $2. We know how challenging it can be to get sustainers to upgrade their monthly gift, and what better way to ask for increased investment than during PMGD when we’re celebrating the mission of public media? We’re also planning to adapt the “value of $1” messaging to support new member acquisition efforts during PMGD.
We are excited to participate in PMGD again and see a lot of potential for it as a fundraising event specific to public media. We really feel that if PMGD continues to grow, it could become our new GivingTuesday and we can grow in person engagement efforts around the two-day event.
PMGD 2024 Station assets are being released this month on publicmediagivingdays.org. This year, stations can expect expanded resources to support direct mail, including graphics and copy for a postcard and additional P.S. copy that can be used in your renewals and acknowledgements. Challenge match copy and graphics are also new this year, in addition to fresh on-air spots provided by PBS and NPR.