Community Radio

One of the ways in which you can finance a community radio station is through the use of donations. In today’s article, we will be looking at the advantages of financing a community radio station in this way (that is, using donations). We will also be looking at the disadvantages of using donations to finance a community radio station. Finally, we will be dealing with the question of how exactly you can go about raising donations to finance a community radio station.

Advantages of using donations to finance a community radio station

One advantage is in the fact that having opted to use donations to finance a community radio stations, you won’t have to interrupt programs (or newscasts) to run ads.

Furthermore, having opted to finance a community radio station using donations, you won’t have to pay too much attention to ‘ratings’. Radio stations that are financed using advertising revenues, on the other hand, have to pay a lot of attention to ‘ratings’ – and they often have to do questionable things, just to improve their ‘ratings’.

Disadvantages of using donations to finance a community radio station

One disadvantage is in the fact that you will find yourself having to beg for the donations. Unlike advertising revenue, which is ‘earned’ as part of a business transaction, donations usually have to be begged for.

Another disadvantage is in the fact that you may actually have a difficult time raising enough money to run the station through donations. Remember, the likely donors will be the station’s ardent listeners: many of whom are likely to be people of limited means. Take, for instance, a listener who happens to be a worker at Lowe’s. Being a Lowe’s employee, he can only access his paystubs by visiting the Mylowes login screen, and signing in there. Yet the paychecks he is likely to encounter are modest: meaning that he can only donate modest sums of money to the community radio station. And that is only if he has anything to spare…

How to raise donations to finance a community radio station

The first step is that of setting up an account, where the donations are to be channeled.

The second step is create a fundraising campaign, and publicize it: inviting people, especially the station’s listeners, to donate their money towards the station’s upkeep.

The third step is to monitor the fundraising account, and subsequently budget for the money that is raised.

One of the ways in which a community radio station can be financially sustained is through the use of advertising revenue. Most of the radio stations are actually financed through advertising revenue. And there is absolutely no reason as to why your community radio station can’t be financed through advertising revenue. But it is also worth noting that there are some radio stations that are unable to attract advertising revenue. So it is not automatic that your community radio station would attract advertising revenue. You must not take it for granted. On the contrary, there are some proactive measures that you need to take, if you are to be able to finance a community radio station on a long-term basis using advertising revenues. At the very least, you need to:

1. Popularize the radio station: advertisers look at radio station’s ratings, before making decisions on whether to advertise through those radio stations or not. The only way to improve your community radio station’s ratings is by popularizing it. And the only way to popularize the radio station is by running worthwhile content. You need to ensure that your radio station is truly worth listening to at all times. It should be the sort of station that a person can devote his entire free time to listening. For instance, a fellow who works at Walmart may, at one time, go to the Walmartone login screen, sign in, and proceed to check his work schedule. In the course of checking his work schedule at Walmartone.com, he may come to realize that he is scheduled to be off duty for an entire weekend. Then he may start thinking of ways in which he can spend this free time. Yours should be the sort of radio station that such a person can opt to listen to (for the entire weekend), without getting bored.
2. Approach potential advertisers: sometimes, you will have potential advertisers approaching you, looking for an opportunity to advertise on your community radio station. But you too need to take the initiative, and approach potential advertisers, with a view to sell them ad spots on your radio station. Don’t assume that the advertisers will just come, if you don’t approach them.
3. Charge reasonable fees for adverts: the objective here is to make it look worthwhile for advertisers to run their ads on your radio station. You need to make it look like a good business proposition, from a cost-benefit point of view.

One of the tasks you have to perform, while managing a community radio station, is that of creating work schedules for the staff. You have to create work schedules for the staff members who are involved in broadcast duties: the presenters, news anchors, DJs and so on. You also have to create work schedules for the technical staff. At yet another level, you have to create work schedules for the support staff: the messengers, the clerks, the people who clean the community radio station premises… and so on.

While creating work schedules for community radio station staff, you need to pay attention to efficiency. This should be the main consideration. If, for instance, you are looking at the broadcasting staff, you need to ensure that you schedule them to work at their most productive hours. You realize that there are people who are best suited for running breakfast shows. There are others who are best suited for running midday shows. Then we have others who are best suited for running late night shows… and so on. These are very critical considerations.

Further, while creating work schedule for community radio station staff, you need to put the staff members’ convenience into consideration. You need to tailor the shifts in such a way that the staff members’ lives are not very badly disrupted. You may need to involve the staff members in the process of creating the work schedules.

After creating the work schedules, you need to avail them to the concerned staff members. Ideally, it should be possible for the staff members to make reference to the work schedules whenever they wish to do so. To that end, you may consider setting up a web-based portal where the staff members can log in, whenever they wish to view their work schedules. The portal can be structured along the same lines as, say, the UPS staff portal, which is also known as the UPSers portal. So you would have the staff members signing up for accounts on the portal, just as UPS staff go through the UPSers sign up procedure in order to get accounts. Then you can have a login screen, where your staff can sign into the portal – designed in the same way as the UPSers portal sign in screen. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You can create your community radio station staff portal in the same way as the other HR portals that are already in existence.

Having managed to set up a community radio station, the next challenge will be that of sustaining it. This, in other words, is the challenge of keeping the community radio station running. Starting a community radio station is one thing. Keeping it running is another matter altogether. So the question that arises here is as to how you can keep the community radio station running. And in that regard, there are three key aspects you need to pay attention to, while trying to sustain a community radio station, namely:

1. The financial aspect: this is the area where most people struggle most, while trying to sustain a community radio station. You need to identify reliable sources of funds to keep the radio station running. This may be a question of getting advertising revenue, if the radio station is popular enough. Or it may be a question of soliciting donations from members of the community that is served by the radio station, to sustain the station. Whichever approach you opt to use to sustain the community radio station, the most important thing is to ensure that there is always some money in the radio station’s bank account.
2. The human resource aspect: this is a question of being able to retain the employees you hire to run the radio station. Attracting talented staff is one thing. Being able to retain them is a different challenge altogether. There are two important points here. Firstly, you need to ensure that the community radio station workers are treated in a decent way consistently. And secondly, you need to ensure that you pay the radio station workers decently. To this end, you may find yourself having to sign up for an online payroll service: like the one accessible at paperlesspay.talx.com. That way, you can have your community radio station workers receiving their paychecks through the Securitas Epay portal, just like the employees in corporate entities.
3. The programming aspect: here, the most important thing is to ensure that the programs run on the community radio station are (consistently) of an interesting nature. This is the only way to maintain the community radio station audience. The moment you stop having interesting content, you will lose the audience. And if you lose the audience, it will be very hard to sustain the community radio station.

Having established a community radio station, the next challenge will be that of popularizing it. This may turn out to be a very challenging undertaking. You have to understand that your community radio station will be competing for an audience with other well established national radio stations. At the local level, there may also be other community radio stations to compete against. Therefore getting people overlook all those other stations, and opt for your community radio station, may not be easy.

You will need to have interesting content, if your community radio station is to be popular. In these sorts of matters, it is often said that ‘content is king’. If you have interesting content, and if people get to know about the interesting content available on your community radio station, they will start listening to it more. They will also tell others about it. It will therefore become very popular.

In terms of interesting content, we are looking at three main things. Firstly, we are looking at good music. Play good music consistently. Secondly, we are looking at good commentary – like, for instance, the topics you bring up for discussion on the radio station. These need to be interesting topics, consistently. Thirdly, we are looking at relevant news: especially keeping in mind the fact that the only reason as to why people tune in to community radio stations is to get the local news. In that regard, a community radio station can actually be likened to the Paycom employee login portal: which people only visit when they need to access information related to their employment. Similarly, people (mostly) only tune into community radio stations to get local news. It is upon you to figure out how to retain their attention, once the local news casts are over.

You will of course also need to hire the best presenters, if your community radio station is to become popular. So this is a question of hiring — and working hard to retain — the best presenters. These need to be lively people, who are able to connect with the listeners at an emotional level.

The success of a community radio station depends to a great extent on the caliber of staff running it. Therefore, the community radio station is likely to be more successful if it is run by highly qualified staff. Given those facts, you need to figure out how to get qualified staff, when setting up a community radio station. You actually need to have the necessary staff before opening the radio station. If you have qualified staff right from the outset, they can help you get things right the first time. And this is important because a radio station’s first days in existence matter a great deal. If a radio station is deemed to be mediocre in its earliest days, it can be very hard to change that perception later on. So you need you have qualified staff, to help you establish the community radio station in the right manner at the outset. Obviously, the question that arises is as to how you can get such qualified staff.

One way in which people setting up new community radio stations get qualified staff is by ‘poaching’. They poach the staff from other existing radio stations. And there is nothing wrong with this approach. After all, the staff are always in search of greener pastures. You may be lucky in your poaching exercise. You may, for instance, come across a radio staffer who has just checked his Kroger prepaid debit card balance — and found the funds to be low (or totally depleted). Such a person, in dire financial circumstances, may be open to any good job offer he can get. So yours would just be to approach him with a proposal for him to join your community radio station, with an offer to pay him slight more than what he his getting at his current radio station. There is a good probability that he will take the bait.

The other way in which you can get qualified staff for a community radio station is by simply advertising the jobs. If you advertise the radio station jobs, you will get applications. Some of the applicants will, of course, be mediocre jokers. But some will be highly qualified staff. So yours would be to go for the better qualified and experienced ones, and enlist them to help you set up the new community radio station.

One of the key projects I was involved in last year was that of starting a community radio station. I came to realize that the task of starting a community radio station is not as easy as it looks. There are challenges to be overcome, before one can be able to actually start a community radio station.

The first challenge to be overcome, when seeking to start a community radio station, is that of raising the necessary funds. The task of setting up a proper community radio station costs quite a bit of money. Getting members of the community to raise the money is not easy, as they may not see a radio station as a priority. On the other hand, getting members of the business community to fund this type of project is not easy either, as they may doubt its viability.

The second challenge to be overcome, when seeking to set up a community radio station, is that of getting the necessary government licenses. And once you get the necessary licenses, there is the challenge of being allocated broadcasting spectrum – which isn’t easy, as the airwaves seem to be fully saturated.

The third challenge to be overcome, when trying to establish a community radio station, is that of acquiring the necessary equipment. Some of the equipment has to be ordered directly from the manufacturers, as it is not readily available in the shops. So you order it, wait for it to be manufactured, and then wait for it to be shipped.

The fourth challenge to be overcome, when trying to establish a community radio station, is that of getting qualified staff. You soon come to realize that there are very few people around who are actually qualified to run a radio station. This seems to be one of those rarer skills. Yet if the radio station is to be successful, you have to ensure that it is staffed by people who really know their stuff. Poaching staff from the established radio stations is hard, as those radio stations tend to offer very competitive salaries…