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Organizing Your Station - Fundraising

One of the absolutely beautiful things about low power radio is how cheap it is. A full studio can be put together with donated equipment, or with used equipment bought cheap, but you are still going to need to raise money. Don't be afraid! We have some answers.

Fundraising

[Forget grants]
[You don't need alot of money]
[Fundraising ideas]
[Once you're broadcasting]

One of the absolutely beautiful things about low power radio is how cheap it is. A full studio can be put together with donated equipment, or with used equipment bought cheap.

The transmitter and associated equipment that you are required by the FCC to have will cost you somewhere between $4500 and 6500, if you buy it all new A cheap studio set up using consumer grade audio stuff will cost you between 0 and $1000, depending how much you scavenge and how picky you are.

Keep in mind that consumer grade studio equipment is perfectly adequate, especially when you are starting out and short of cash. It is generally a little noisier, less convenient to use and will break much quicker than good professional machinery- but if you are putting things together on a shoestring, the pro gear can wait. You may need to rent studio space -- but if you are good, you should be able to get some local group to donate a room to you, at least for the first year or so. Then you will have some photocopying expenses, and you may want to pay for a Webster domain name, and a phone line with voice mail so people can get in touch with you that way, and a post office box rental, and incorporating costs, and other minor things that will come up. You should be able to get legal and engineering assistance for free.

Forget grants for now

The main point here is that you do not need grants to do this. Your labor should be all volunteer. People will do this out of sheer love. A few lucky people may be able to tie their work with the station into their day jobs doing community work, so they will be able to work on the station while they are on the clock. And then you will have a few people who will just work on it all the time because they are obsessed. Which is generally a good thing, to be encouraged, unless they are schizophrenic, in which case you do not have to worry anyway, as they will eventually be abducted by aliens or just lose interest.

So you do not need a lot of money

The main thing you need right now is community support, so all your fundraising should also be focused on telling people about your station, and getting their support and their ideas. What we have taken this to mean is: do not have exclusive, $50-a-plate dinners as fundraisers. You should not be that desperate for the money, and you want to bring in as many people as possible, not exclude people with no extra cash. Rich people should be encouraged to write you checks directly, but better to have your events be cheap and accessible to all. You do not need to mimic the snotty fundraising tactics of so many non-profits out there, the gala balls and fancy dinners and high-priced auctions and such.

Some ideas for getting some money

So how can you raise some money on a small scale?

Have a benefit concert with local bands (we had a concert last spring that cost $6 at the door and raised $1300 -- enough to build our entire studio).

Have a party at someones house, ask people to bring food and drink, have your DJs take turns spinning records all night, and charge $3 at the door (we made $250 that way one night).

Do screenings of local independently produced movies or videos. Have a poetry reading. Ask local performing arts spaces to donate the proceedings from one night of performance. Set up tables at local events and ask for donations. Make t-shirts and sell them. Make your fiscal sponsor and mailing address widely known, so it is easy for people to send you checks.

Once You're Broadcasting

If (once? when?) you actually get the license and get the station up and running, then you may want to consider hiring someone part-time to coordinate all the scheduling and continued outreach and whatnot. So then you will need a more consistent source of money in order to pay that person, if you choose that route.

But even when you are on the air, you should be able to cover all your non-staff costs through benefit events, and through a couple other ways. You could consider asking each DJ to pay $10 a month -- with 168 hours in the week, you may have anywhere from 50 to 150 active DJs, which comes to a steady income of $500 to $1500 each month (of course, that is assuming you can collect all that money -- good luck!).

You could also consider asking locally owned businesses to underwrite shows, which could potentially bring in another $1000 or so a month. Be careful with underwriting, though. Make sure you have got a strict set of guidelines in place so you do not end up changing programming to meet the businesses needs. Just keep remembering: you are not that desperate for cash. This is not a typical non-profit organization. But anyway, you do not need to worry about all the expenses of operating a station just now. For now, just focus on doing outreach events that are just as much geared towards getting community support and involvement as to getting money.

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