Ira Glass fundraising message: The Rumble in the Public Radio Jungle
Hello fundraising colleagues!
Our friends at PRX came to me and Snap Judgment's Glynn Washington a few months ago with an idealistic and heartfelt plea to invent something fun and new for this pledge drive. I really loved that they did that and we’re all very excited to roll this stuff out. It’s a series of fundraising spots where Glynn and I compete to tell the best story.
Listeners can vote when they pledge. It’s all designed to do the thing that’s hardest in any pledge drive: give a listener a reason to call RIGHT NOW. They call right now because now’s the time to vote for whose story is best.
These spots are designed to fit into the longer Morning Edition breaks, or other openings in your schedule. Ideally, of course, we try to keep our pledge spots short. These are longer than usual only because it eats up time for each of us to tell a decent story! Our advice is to start the pledge break with US (or tell people how to pledge in a sentence and hit our spots), so your pitchers get the maximum time to give the website or phone number after we’re done.
The package includes three rounds of head-to-head story competition, a spot to play at the end if Glynn has more votes, a spot you play if I get more votes, and an idealistic little spot we cooked up that’s about mission, that you can run anytime. You can run this over two or three hours (that’s my advice) or pack it all into one hour. Each module is self-explaining and stands alone, so it’s fine that your listeners in Hour Two didn’t hear the stuff that happened in Hour One. It’s an uncomplicated contest. Nobody will be confused. You don’t have to run all three rounds for it to work.
We know it adds to your work to count votes! Sorry about that but I hope you’ll agree it’s worth it to try something fun and new. We checked with a few stations about the best way to do the voting and we learned that at most stations, when people pledge online, they can make a comment. In our spots, we tell people to fill out the comment box with their vote, or tell the operator. If your on-air pitcher has access to the comment boxes, he or she can count for him or herself.
STUFF FOR LOCAL PITCHERS TO SAY ABOUT THESE SPOTS:
Underline that listeners have to call NOW if they want to vote. They can pledge any time of course but to get the chance to vote, call now. This makes these modules unique and they should be sure to milk it for everything it’s got.
Don’t make it sound like it’s obvious which story should win; that’ll kill the fun of the contest. So if there’s just one pitcher, he or she shouldn’t name the story they’d vote for. What would work really beautifully, though, is if there are two pitchers and one picks Glynn and one picks me and they argue the merits of each and encourage listeners to weigh in by pledging and voting. Again, that gives a reason to call now.
If you can read the vote counts as they come in, do it! But only if Glynn and I are in a tight battle for first place. Keep the suspense up about who will win.
Give the web address and/or phone number and remind people of the mechanics of voting: Fill in the comment box online or tell the operator.
There are stories on public radio – on the news shows, on shows like Snap Judgment and This American Life – that you can’t imagine appearing anywhere else on radio.
If you find yourself repeating things you hear on this station to your friends and loved ones, don’t you want to keep that stuff coming into your life? Help us bring it to you.
Vote! Share your vote on social! Share the fact that you pledged on social! Remind your free-loading friends who listen but don’t pledge that they should join you! (Okay maybe strike the word “free-loading” from that last suggestion, but you get the idea.)
If there was a great story on Morning Edition that half-hour, or a memorable story in the last day or two, maybe throw that into the mix and tell listeners they can vote for that one as well. So it’s me vs Glynn vs some unusually good report from wherever. I know that’s an unusual choice, but I think I’m trying to say let your pitchers invent whatever they think might work with this.
Please email any questions or feedback to membership@prx.org and to me at ira@thislife.org … and my best wishes with this little experiment in its maiden voyage.
Let’s bring in some donations and have some fun!
– Ira
Special thanks to WVXU-Cincinnati and artist Oakley Scot for creating artwork for this fundraiser and giving permission to share it with stations.