Listener Support

I'm getting ready for another fund drive. I volunteer my services at WNPR. I ask for contributions on the air for an employer that let me go. I do it because of a sense of loyalty to the people I used to work with. I do it because I think the information provided by public radio is important for promoting civil conversation in our society. I value the content from NPR, PRI and APM. I also value the content produced locally when done well. The local stations need funding to keep you informed regionally and nationally. I'm glad I can help.

The model I use comes from Audience 98 - The Stairway to Given.

1. Someone must be a listener or a user of the service. 
2. The individual relies on the service
3. The content or service must be personally important. (Personal importance and sense of community.) This is the idea that the content and the services are the ties that bind together people with certain shared values. 
4. Funding Beliefs – Users must believe their support is crucial. They must understand that funding from other sources is only a piece of the fiscal puzzle. Individual support is the most reliable source of income. 
5. Household income is a contributing factor in whether someone will give, but that it is not nearly as significant as the other steps of The Stairway to Given. 

People give because they rely on the service, find it personally important and believe their contributions are truly needed.

As more of public radio's audience switches to digital content on social media, the web and  mobile devices as platforms for their information, the question becomes can the listener service model be used to raise the revenue needed to support the services? 

John Sutton's recent blog asks Will Listeners Voluntarily Support Web-based Services? The impetus for John's question is the report in Current that corporate support for NPR was off by $9 million last year. NPR's Stephen Moss says the potential for growth in digital ad revenue is limited by competition and downward pressure on the price of ads.   Corporations and foundation support cannot be the only sources of income for public media. 

What's working? Are there examples within public media of successful revenue generation from users?

Can the system build on that success? I think we need to find those answers. I'm willing to help.