This is a message for station managers: Whether you’re serving audiences with news, music, or PBS Learning Media for home-schooling, public media is punching through the noise to super-serve our communities.  All of that comes in the context of disruptions to doing ‘business as usual.’ 

• Postponement of pledge drives

• Interruptions in direct mail production 

• Cancellation of underwriting contracts

• Cancellation of station & partner events

• Zero face to face meetings with major donors

Now that you have had a chance to spend time at home by yourself thinking about the role your station has in delivering services, what have you learned while serving the community during a national health crisis?  Lots of juggling between delivering service and raising money to support that service.  It’s a common theme---when I’ve reached out to colleagues in public media, staff bandwidth appears to be so thin that it’s hard for station managers to even have a conversation about ways to increase staff bandwidth.  A Catch-22.

For those stations with a July-June fiscal year, this is the month when we typically form budgets for the coming fiscal year. 

The pressures are on managers from many fronts to rein in costs.  For university licensees, that may include hiring freezes, staff reductions, and decreases in university contributions to station budgets.  For community, state, local authority and other licensees, the safety net may have even larger holes.

It’s time to get creative.

Ultimately, we’d all rather be pouring a larger share of station resources into serving the community with programs and resources.  We’re recognizing the need to bolster local, high-touch fundraising efforts.  CDP has a number of projects that can take on the cyclical aspects of your membership program that both give valuable time back to your local fundraising staff and save the station money.  Imagine being able to go back to your university or local board with a story that says, “Yes, I agree that belt-tightening needs to happen, and here are some plans that we’re proposing to both save money and continue serving the community in a robust way.” 

With CDP Direct, our scaled mail/email co-op solution, we can assure that your mail will go out, curated by the CDP team on your behalf, so you and your team can then devote time and resources to LOCAL fundraising and engagement pursuits.  You’ll get the financial benefit of scale, plus the obsessively-tested messaging that assures CDP client success.

The Member Services Bureau is a more comprehensive solution that helps stations strategically tackle programming, major giving, pledge, events, grants, and other aspects of station activities than can ONLY be done LOCALLY.  MSB aims to be revenue-neutral or revenue-positive for stations starting in year one.  I hope you’ll explore that option.

Now that you have a few solutions in your front pocket, we’ll be in touch in the coming weeks to help you and your team increase the bandwidth that is so thin right now.