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.