Putting the public into public media membership

[Commentary] Summer 2014, public media consultant Mark Fuerst interviewed 40 front-line development professionals at public media stations. Fuerst noted that the people he interviewed expressed concerns about the continued effectiveness of their ability to raise money over time. Two-thirds of the membership directors at radio-only licensees reported that both incoming pledge drive calls and online pledge had declined. Six of the 15 radio-only licensees reported a decline of over 10 percent. These trends, coupled with continuing changes in patterns in public radio consumption, demand new approaches to thinking about the sustainability of the current membership model.

What, then, is the alternative? How can we encourage people to become invested in the future of public media, both as listeners and as members? In this report, I describe the results of a multi-method effort to detail an alternative membership model for public media stations. This model is based not on the pledge drive (or on cultivating sustaining donors or large donors, as many stations seek to do), but on building an infrastructure that allows community members to contribute to their stations in a variety of ways, including non-financial means. It takes as its starting point the understanding that building relationships with potential donors leads to their sustained support -- in the form of time, money, and advocacy on behalf of the station.