[Chad Davis] 14:02:16 Hey everybody, uh, thank you for joining us for our October PMI webinar. Uh, this is, um… a new thing that we're going to be doing, actually, uh, quarterly. [Chad Davis] 14:02:30 with our friends at Current, big ups to, uh, Mike and Karen there for collaborating with us on those. So these, uh. [Chad Davis] 14:02:36 You'll know these are current collaborations because the series is called Innovate with Current. [Chad Davis] 14:02:42 And, um, for this one in particular, we, um, we actually were going to start this in January, but then Tom pitched us this idea, and it was so good that we said to Current, hey, maybe we could do this. [Chad Davis] 14:02:53 Let me start… let me start 3 months early. This is a good one. Um, and that's because we're going to be talking about digital revenue. [Chad Davis] 14:03:00 And, um, like I said, Tom pitched us this, uh, it was a brainstorm coming out of PMDMC, I don't want to steal his thunder, so I'll let him give. [Chad Davis] 14:03:08 more of a provenance to you. Um, but before I hand it off to him. [Chad Davis] 14:03:13 And he'll do introductions to our panel. I want to also just thank NETA for their constant support with the promotion and helping us keep the. [Chad Davis] 14:03:21 your learning community, uh, active? And also thanks to Amber, uh, and to David, my co-conspirators here. [Chad Davis] 14:03:30 with PMI. And I think with that, uh, that ticks all my little boxes. So, uh, November, I will say this. [Chad Davis] 14:03:37 We'll mention this again at the end, but, uh, November's webinar, we're going to be talking about station and community collaboration, and our test case is going to be the game that, uh, Amber and I. [Chad Davis] 14:03:47 co-led, uh, for our stations called Powwow Bound, so we'll be able to catch that in our November webinar. [Chad Davis] 14:03:54 Uh, and that was my last piece of housekeeping. So, with that, I am… Oh, okay, yes. Please also use the chat. Um, I guess that's true. Don't, uh, for Q&As, for those who are new to… [David Huppert] 14:03:57 remind them to use the chat, Chad. Yeah. [Chad Davis] 14:04:07 these webinars. We, uh, we just do everything in the chat, so please. [Chad Davis] 14:04:11 Uh, put your questions in there. Do actively communicate there. Our panelists are going to be monitoring it when they're not speaking to you with their presentations. So, alright. [Chad Davis] 14:04:20 Did I get it all, guys? Ready to go? [Chad Davis] 14:04:22 All right, Tom, handing it off to you, buddy. [Tom Davidson] 14:04:25 Thanks, Chad. Hi folks, I'm Tom Davidson. I'm pleased to see lots of friends and former co-workers over there in the participant box. [Tom Davidson] 14:04:32 I have ping-ponged between commercial media and public media for the last 35 years or so at places in the commercial world, like Tribune and Gannett. [Tom Davidson] 14:04:41 And at PBS Digital, PBS North Carolina, and consulting gigs at a bunch of stations. [Tom Davidson] 14:04:46 I landed here at Penn State about a year ago in a teaching role best described as being a mad scientist. [Tom Davidson] 14:04:53 And as I was pulling together some of my first lectures, I started coming across numbers and examples. [Tom Davidson] 14:04:59 that made it clear just how dramatic of a change we've seen in the last decade in audience behavior. [Tom Davidson] 14:05:04 And I realized our friends in commercial broadcasting, well, they know things and act on them that we may not know. [Tom Davidson] 14:05:11 That dovetailed with some stuff that I heard at PMDMC over the summer that really led to this webinar that we're doing today. We've got some terrific guests, I'll talk more about them in a moment, but thank you to Tyler Smith from Tanager Digital, Christina McPhilks. [Tom Davidson] 14:05:25 from Carl Bloom Associates and Alex Curley, product consultant who used to be at NPR and now runs semipublic.co. [Tom Davidson] 14:05:33 We all wanted to talk a little bit about how changing audience creates challenges, but also opportunities. [Tom Davidson] 14:05:40 for our fundraising efforts. That was the genesis of this discussion, which Chad, PMI, NETA, and Current are happy to host, and we thank them for that. [Tom Davidson] 14:05:49 What I want to do to tee things up at the beginning is talk about just some overview stats. [Tom Davidson] 14:05:54 Then bring these other smart folks in to talk about what your station can do right now. [Tom Davidson] 14:06:00 To improve fundraising prospects in 2026 and beyond. And I want to start on our first slide. [Tom Davidson] 14:06:08 With a question. What were you watching in 2015? [Tom Davidson] 14:06:13 There were great scripted hour-long dramas, NCIS. Mediocre sitcoms, okay, you can tell I never watched and never quite got the Big Bang Theory. Reality TV. [Tom Davidson] 14:06:25 And next slide, please. In our world of public media, of course, we were celebrating. [Tom Davidson] 14:06:30 The last season of Downton Abbey premiering. In that 2015 television series. [Tom Davidson] 14:06:39 half of the broadcasts that were most watched in prime time that year were some form of episodic television. [Tom Davidson] 14:06:46 Yes, the other half were, of course, sports events like the Super Bowl. [Tom Davidson] 14:06:51 You can see the source, and you can click the link when you download the deck later. But variety, every year, the trade publication, every year looks not at the season-long ratings. [Tom Davidson] 14:07:02 But ought the individual broadcasts, and they compile a list of the 100 most. [Tom Davidson] 14:07:08 viewed broadcasts that year. And in 2015, if you look just at the top 20. [Tom Davidson] 14:07:16 Half of the top 20 shows were one or another form of episodic television. Next slide, please. We've got the blacklist, we've got NCIS ranking up 20, 30 million viewers. One more, please, Tyler. [Tom Davidson] 14:07:32 Which leads to a question. That was a decade ago. [Tom Davidson] 14:07:35 Last year, the number of episodic broadcasts in the top 50, you just got a hint. [Tom Davidson] 14:07:41 Zero. None. Zilch! Next one, please, Tyler. [Tom Davidson] 14:07:48 Yes, 75 of the top 100 last year were live sports. [Tom Davidson] 14:07:54 Something PBS no longer plays in. Most of that was the NFL. We had the Summer Olympics. Okay, there were some other special events, like the Oscars, and it was a presidential year, so the debate scored high. [Tom Davidson] 14:08:08 Next animation, please. The best episodic piece of television last year. Next one, please. [Tom Davidson] 14:08:16 was an episode of Tracker that came in at number 70 in the top 100. [Tom Davidson] 14:08:23 That's the television world. The story's not much different in the world of audio. [Tom Davidson] 14:08:28 Terrestrial AM FM radio now gets barely one-third of that share of ear from consumers. [Tom Davidson] 14:08:37 And in fact, consumers now spend more time listening. [Tom Davidson] 14:08:41 to streaming music, like Spotify or Pandora, and YouTube, especially for video podcasts, then they do listening to traditional AM FM radio. [Tom Davidson] 14:08:53 This is a group of digital innovators. We kind of know this stuff, but these data points are stark to me. They talk about how just. [Tom Davidson] 14:09:01 How severely our audience for terrestrial broadcast has eroded. [Tom Davidson] 14:09:06 In the past decade, to shift to these on-demand platforms. Next one, please, Tyler. [Tom Davidson] 14:09:12 It's gone so far that our commercial brethren are running as fast as they can. [Tom Davidson] 14:09:18 From the phrase, broadcasting and broadcasters, you have organizations like Comcast, NBC, putting some of their best content. [Tom Davidson] 14:09:28 On the streaming service, not on NBC. Next one, please, the animation. [Tom Davidson] 14:09:34 You've got to combat YouTube and Spotify. You have the world's largest radio group. Next one, please. [Tom Davidson] 14:09:42 Clear Channel! I'm sorry, that's what they used to be called. They're now called iHeartMedia. [Tom Davidson] 14:09:48 The word radio isn't even in their name anymore, even though they literally own more radio stations. [Tom Davidson] 14:09:56 than anybody else in the world. There's a message there. Next one, please. In our world, yes. [Tom Davidson] 14:10:04 Animation, please, Tyler. Our content is available on demand through services like Passport and NPR One. We're getting, as the contributor development partnership reports in current every month. [Tom Davidson] 14:10:16 More in money through digital channels, and this is great. Next one, please. [Tom Davidson] 14:10:21 But, an awful lot of our digital giving is still tied to on-air pledge. [Tom Davidson] 14:10:29 Next one. To the point of their… next one, please. Even being jokes. [Tom Davidson] 14:10:35 about the average age of our listeners and viewers. [Tom Davidson] 14:10:39 Next slide, please. We've seen a wonderful bump in donations due to something really bad happening, the rescission. [Tom Davidson] 14:10:51 Before that, though, we were raising slightly more money from slightly fewer people. [Tom Davidson] 14:10:56 Getting more dollars per donor. But from a universe of donors that was getting smaller and getting older every year. [Tom Davidson] 14:11:04 Like all of you, I'm grateful. for the bump we're seeing. [Tom Davidson] 14:11:09 Since the rescission vote. We'll talk about this with Alex a little bit later. [Tom Davidson] 14:11:13 We've got to ask ourselves a couple hard questions. One. [Tom Davidson] 14:11:17 Will that bump last? And… next slide, please. And one more. [Tom Davidson] 14:11:24 If it doesn't last, what are we gonna do about it? [Tom Davidson] 14:11:28 Since our audiences have shifted to these on-demand digital platforms, how can we make sure that our fundraising efforts. [Tom Davidson] 14:11:36 Or keeping pace. This is where the tie to PMDMC came in. At PMDMC, I got to sit in on a session led by Tyler and Christina. [Tom Davidson] 14:11:44 That I thought was fantastic. Talking about experiments and efforts and tests. [Tom Davidson] 14:11:50 to raise money from digital audiences that may not ever tune into us on broadcast. [Tom Davidson] 14:11:58 Tyler, who's of Tanager Digital, is going to talk about some of the work he's done with a variety of stations in our world. [Tom Davidson] 14:12:05 Christina, who works across the nonprofit landscape, helping to raise money, is going to offer some terrific examples. [Tom Davidson] 14:12:12 Yes, of work that's been done with public media stations, but also looking and comparing us with the rest of the nonprofit landscape. And finally, Alex is going to talk with us about some of the experiments he has ginned up. [Tom Davidson] 14:12:24 in a hurry to help raise money and offer some guidance and examples on how you might be able to do. [Tom Davidson] 14:12:32 The same thing at your station. I was blown away by the session at PMDMC, and I've been blown away as we've had some of our planning sessions for this. I was joking a few minutes ago, if I wasn't. [Tom Davidson] 14:12:44 hosting and teeing up this one, I would have signed up as an attendee. [Tom Davidson] 14:12:49 Let's get to the good stuff. Tyler, take us away, please. [Tyler Smith] 14:12:52 Thank you very much, Tom. What a wonderful and resounding. [Tyler Smith] 14:12:56 intro that was, I appreciate it, and I hope I can atone for navigating your slides for you. Thank you very much. [Tyler Smith] 14:13:03 Uh, Tyler Smith, the principal and founder of Tanager Digital. I am here, uh. [Tyler Smith] 14:13:08 to contextualize. Tom's presentation and his core points to answer the biggest question of what happens next in public media. [Tyler Smith] 14:13:19 As the context has been shared. donations are up, but what happens next year? [Tyler Smith] 14:13:24 The answer's pretty clear, if you haven't understood it already. [Tyler Smith] 14:13:27 Digitizing fundraising. is the response we have. [Tyler Smith] 14:13:33 If you don't believe me, right, believe the data. [Tyler Smith] 14:13:36 that the great… opportunity for public media. [Tyler Smith] 14:13:41 is bringing its investment past the point of diminishing returns. [Tyler Smith] 14:13:46 To keep pace with its competing organizations. This is from M&R last fiscal year. [Tyler Smith] 14:13:53 that Public Media Trails, by orders of magnitude, the investment that. [Tyler Smith] 14:13:57 Similar organizations make. I want to call out specifically that when we look at this, which is the amount of reinvested money that comes in from digital. [Tyler Smith] 14:14:06 back into digital. The smallest organizations are the ones that spend the most. [Tyler Smith] 14:14:13 Now, what does underinvestment in digital. cause. Well… You're not being seen online. [Tyler Smith] 14:14:21 your organization, your station, in the absence of making the decision to invest your resources, your people, your money. [Tyler Smith] 14:14:29 Results in things like… Is your content on social media actually being seen? It's not. [Tyler Smith] 14:14:34 You have 10,000 followers, probably 200 of them see your posts. [Tyler Smith] 14:14:38 When you had your CEO or your general manager ask. [Tyler Smith] 14:14:43 and solicit donations in the face of recession not too many months ago. [Tyler Smith] 14:14:47 Do you want to be the one to tell them that, well, we emailed 55,000 people, only 800 actually saw it? [Tyler Smith] 14:14:53 How many searches for your station online are actually being converted? [Tyler Smith] 14:14:59 In answering these. We have to look to commercial media, as Tom alluded to. What do they know? What do they do that we do not? Well, the answer's pretty simple. [Tyler Smith] 14:15:07 They invest in the means of distribution on digital channels. [Tyler Smith] 14:15:11 They use always-on campaigns to stay present. From now until next year, with the prospects who are interested in continuing the conversation. [Tyler Smith] 14:15:20 In the absence of doing so, we have cold audiences that are much less receptive, statistically and intuitively, to the outreach that we're. [Tyler Smith] 14:15:28 using to, uh, extol our mission. Finally, these organizations use modern technology. [Tyler Smith] 14:15:35 We'll talk a lot about algorithm targeting here. And these organizations do so without relying on antiquated. [Tyler Smith] 14:15:42 outdated work that is manual and does not respond to the moment of having reduced teams and reduced budgets as we enter a new fiscal cycle. [Tyler Smith] 14:15:52 To underscore this, graph on the left. I think, Tom… best explains the phenomenon, the audience is declining, but where are they going? The chart on the right. [Tyler Smith] 14:16:02 data from the Wall Street Journal. The biggest and most… capable organizations, public and private, are following their audiences on digital. This is inversely. [Tyler Smith] 14:16:13 and directly where the audience is and where that investment is being made by organizations, mission-oriented and otherwise. [Tyler Smith] 14:16:20 that are making the right decisions about where to find, converse with, and convert their audience. [Tyler Smith] 14:16:28 What does this look like? What does streaming look like for public media stations? [Tyler Smith] 14:16:34 This is a campaign from Seattle. This is a 30-second, very high-polish. [Tyler Smith] 14:16:40 commercial that… promotes the mission, that shows off the organization's. [Tyler Smith] 14:16:46 content. I won't play it now, uh, it's really strong. Examples, I think, on our website. [Tyler Smith] 14:16:52 We place this for 2 months, May and June, on… the best performing streaming channels, recognizable names, Paramount, Tubi, NBC, uh, the top 25 would be recognizable. [Tyler Smith] 14:17:05 And some quick data, if you just look at the left for a minute, despite the red box. [Tyler Smith] 14:17:09 that for a $12,000 investment, it certainly may seem high for some stations, and 2 months, May and June of this year. [Tyler Smith] 14:17:16 We reached 137,000 households. It's only 9 cents a household. How does that compare to direct mail? [Tyler Smith] 14:17:22 What would it cost to send direct mail to 137,000 people? [Tyler Smith] 14:17:27 What would it cost to talk to them every single week? [Tyler Smith] 14:17:29 When we look at results, immediately, at the start of the fiscal year. [Tyler Smith] 14:17:33 The recession drive, the fall drive, this is June… I'm sorry, July 1 to September 30. [Tyler Smith] 14:17:40 We see 6400 is immediately recovered. We can measure that from Google Analytics, we can see how they started their journey from. [Tyler Smith] 14:17:47 Uh, connected TV, CTV, how they ultimately converted through other means, whether they found us on Google, whether they saw a Facebook ad, whether they just came to our website to stream after they heard about us. [Tyler Smith] 14:17:58 And we say it's only 50% being returned, but here's what I ask. [Tyler Smith] 14:18:03 If 55% is recovered immediately. And we say non-clickable format, what we mean is no one can click a TV commercial. [Tyler Smith] 14:18:09 They still were able to come back. And ask yourself, is your station's life cycle for donors. [Tyler Smith] 14:18:14 From first contact to first contribution, is it 3 years? [Tyler Smith] 14:18:18 Is it 5 years? What about 5 weeks? Or 5 months? [Tyler Smith] 14:18:24 By increasing the quality and the quantity of touchpoints between the. [Tyler Smith] 14:18:29 First contact. into the spring, and the solicitation. [Tyler Smith] 14:18:33 For support in the summer. We were able to immediately see this. [Tyler Smith] 14:18:39 return. Another brief example, I just… want to talk about. [Tyler Smith] 14:18:46 is work we did with APM Studios. It says, video insertion on YouTube, right? Short format videos. This is… YouTube videos, very familiar, but by being very focused and very thoughtful. [Tyler Smith] 14:19:00 in the targeting, by leaning into the algorithm, by saying who's going to do a better job of identifying our donors? [Tyler Smith] 14:19:06 Psychography or demography? It's the former. Now, by identifying the folks most interested in this content, want us to look at the right. [Tyler Smith] 14:19:16 We got a lot of people to the website, or to the channel, I should say, and that's great. [Tyler Smith] 14:19:21 We got what we paid for. When you make an investment, you should get people back to your website. [Tyler Smith] 14:19:26 But what we saw when we… after… in addition to getting the people that we paid to visit our website and our channel. [Tyler Smith] 14:19:32 was that we had a 34% increase in residual organic. That's a fancy way of saying. [Tyler Smith] 14:19:38 a whole bunch of people elected, a full third and then some, to come back to our content. [Tyler Smith] 14:19:44 after seeing our content promoted to them. And that's pretty easy to visualize. [Tyler Smith] 14:19:49 Because… when we go to the YouTube app, as an example. [Tyler Smith] 14:19:56 And we seek out content. Perhaps you're looking for a baseball highlight for a certain player. [Tyler Smith] 14:20:02 that we typically have not behaviorally sought out previously. [Tyler Smith] 14:20:07 What happens the next morning, right, when we watch content after search for it? We see… a video at the top of our feed that is either that player, or it's from the channel that had the highlights. [Tyler Smith] 14:20:17 That is what is happening here. When we connect with folks. [Tyler Smith] 14:20:20 on the social channels, on digital channels, that lead them. [Tyler Smith] 14:20:26 to the content they want to find that resonates with them. [Tyler Smith] 14:20:28 They are compelled to continue to come back and create more organic and free touchpoints. [Tyler Smith] 14:20:34 We were also able to say. that there was incredible insight into who the. [Tyler Smith] 14:20:38 who and where the prospect consumes. It was eye-opening that over half. [Tyler Smith] 14:20:44 of all viewers did so, and this is YouTube. [Tyler Smith] 14:20:47 on their TV. Not on their phone or their tablet. [Tyler Smith] 14:20:50 on their TV. It is fully replacing the broadcast TV. [Tyler Smith] 14:20:54 the broadcast on TV. Now, we talked as well about how do we use this technology to find who our donors are? [Tyler Smith] 14:21:01 We don't just want to talk to them. We want to make small, focused investments, as little as $50 at the bottom, we'll see. [Tyler Smith] 14:21:09 to identify the folks most interested in our mission. [Tyler Smith] 14:21:12 Now, for $500, the station we worked with that reached 70,000 people. [Tyler Smith] 14:21:17 It's pretty incredible. A third of the people that saw the ad either commented, liked it, shared it. [Tyler Smith] 14:21:24 engaged in the comments, 8%, 6,000 people, roughly. actually clicked through to the website. [Tyler Smith] 14:21:29 Think about this. We are promoting our local news content. [Tyler Smith] 14:21:33 for a PBS station, the short-form video of our… our most popular shows. [Tyler Smith] 14:21:39 the folks that are interested in are gonna find us. [Tyler Smith] 14:21:41 Those who click and stay engaged are our donors. [Tyler Smith] 14:21:44 This tells us exactly who they are, right? This isn't third-party data, so the guy from. [Tyler Smith] 14:21:49 Portland, Oregon is behaving like the guy from Portland, Maine, that's not the case. [Tyler Smith] 14:21:54 We know who's interested in us, because. they respond to our content. [Tyler Smith] 14:21:59 And not only are they responding to our content. [Tyler Smith] 14:22:02 They're starting the pathway to becoming a new. donor with our organization. [Tyler Smith] 14:22:07 Just a quick look of what I mean, specifically. I know this is sort of abstract. [Tyler Smith] 14:22:12 consider an organization like this that has a following of probably 50,000, uh. [Tyler Smith] 14:22:17 followers on Facebook. Compare this to what your organization is. [Tyler Smith] 14:22:20 what their engagement looks like. By making a small investment. [Tyler Smith] 14:22:24 Look at the quality of engagement on this. This is tens of thousands of people that aren't just seeing a commercial. [Tyler Smith] 14:22:28 They're seeing social interaction. These folks. will then be, we'd say, retargeted. We'd have follow-up interactions, a conversation over time with them. [Tyler Smith] 14:22:39 that compels them and stays present. throughout the year, to then convert during our drives. [Tyler Smith] 14:22:47 Now, this is what an example of that system looks like. [Tyler Smith] 14:22:52 We put out our content to folks the algorithm deems are most… interested, and most likely to engage. [Tyler Smith] 14:23:01 We then, to stay present. with brand advertising. I know Christina's gonna do, uh, a great job of showing some examples of this specifically. [Tyler Smith] 14:23:10 by retargeting. the people who listen to our streams. [Tyler Smith] 14:23:14 by staying present with the folks who go to our website, by staying with new donors who are interested in our stuff on Instagram and Facebook. These are all automated. [Tyler Smith] 14:23:25 solutions to stay present, to show off our mission in between drives for pennies. [Tyler Smith] 14:23:29 To keep the audience warm and continue to build the case for fiscal 26 and beyond. [Tyler Smith] 14:23:37 some data from a partner station on the left. This provided the data of the first gift from digital. [Tyler Smith] 14:23:42 We'll call the chart on the right. By implementing a system like this, by tying our wagon to. [Tyler Smith] 14:23:48 pitching our wagon, sorry, to the… means of digital distribution by simply showing up rather than feeling like we need to do a perfect job. [Tyler Smith] 14:23:56 By making a small organizational investment over time. We are attaching ourselves to where the audience is. [Tyler Smith] 14:24:05 That is a proven thing. If there's one thing that… Tom's presentation should underscore, it's that. [Tyler Smith] 14:24:12 the… means to reaching these folks. [Tyler Smith] 14:24:16 is pretty well proven. what is more important than the work is always the people, and that those of us in. [Tyler Smith] 14:24:24 development and revenue roles, and I would say just take a look at this after, in the interest of time. [Tyler Smith] 14:24:30 Siloing our work teams, right, is not the pathway to. [Tyler Smith] 14:24:36 the result we want, especially in the face of the… of limited resources. [Tyler Smith] 14:24:40 By having our revenue teams, our marketing and our membership. [Tyler Smith] 14:24:46 align and conjoin. We are setting ourselves up for efficiency and economies of scale that will achieve the same returns that the private sector can. [Tyler Smith] 14:24:55 My closing thought here… I said, everyone lives online. [Tyler Smith] 14:24:59 Whether it's a first-time tip-level donor or a prospect. [Tyler Smith] 14:25:02 They, like the major giver who just gave your station $50,000 to $100,000. [Tyler Smith] 14:25:07 They have a Facebook or an Instagram profile. They use a Google account, they stream, certainly. Most importantly, they live a digital life with their ad experiences are normalized. [Tyler Smith] 14:25:18 Unlike junk mail, unlike… emails that get sorted to spam. [Tyler Smith] 14:25:23 We are used to being advertised to online, and mission-driven content from our local station will send out against swimwear ads. [Tyler Smith] 14:25:32 To recap, this requires investment. We shared the data that proves that. We're so far before the point of diminishing returns. This is true for every station. [Tyler Smith] 14:25:42 by implementing more digital touchpoints, we're continuing the conversation, and we're collapsing our donor timeline from years to months and sometimes weeks. [Tyler Smith] 14:25:50 Technology tells us exactly who our donors are. And is it better, more cost-effective investment. [Tyler Smith] 14:25:57 than other means of demographic donor conversations. And finally, in addition to investing to meet our audience where they are, organizational alignment will multiply the results. [Tyler Smith] 14:26:08 of your fundraising efforts. With that, I will turn it over to. [Tyler Smith] 14:26:12 Christina, who will give us a little bit of a specific face on what I'm talking about. [Christina McPhillips] 14:26:19 Thank you, Tyler. Um, so I'm here to be your practical gal, if you will, and kind of show you how you can apply a lot of these things to your own station. I think it's important to know that, um, echoing a lot of things that Tom and Tyler have said, um, we're not abandoning the other ways that we're fundraising. [Christina McPhillips] 14:26:39 Um, I always like to tell this to this… the nonprofits we work with outside of the public media landscape, by asking you to do these things, we are not telling you to abandon anything else. So, no fear. [Christina McPhillips] 14:26:50 Um, let's talk about testing and trying new things. [Christina McPhillips] 14:26:53 Um, small stations can be doing the things that I'm going to show you in a few minutes, and then, um, this works for a lot of different sizes of teams. Ideally, your marketing and fundraising teams are going to function together to plan these things. [Christina McPhillips] 14:27:07 the marketing team, and even production teams may say something like, our initiatives and goals. [Christina McPhillips] 14:27:14 Are these things? Are station goals are these things? And then the fundraising team is going to come in and say, here's how we're going to execute this for you. [Christina McPhillips] 14:27:22 Um, and… and really to highlight some of the things that Tyler said, we're… when we are recommending that you do these digital campaigns, we're not saying. [Christina McPhillips] 14:27:32 you're not going to be cannibalizing your existing donors. You're really going to be finding new donors through these channels, different age groups, potentially, but also keeping in touch. [Christina McPhillips] 14:27:44 with your current donors in the world that they live in, that online world that Tyler just finished talking about. They all… we all have personalities online. [Christina McPhillips] 14:27:53 Um, so anyway, so… so let me walk through some practical tips and things that we've learned. [Christina McPhillips] 14:27:59 local storytelling really works. I'll show you some campaigns around that. [Christina McPhillips] 14:28:03 Low barrier offers will get sign-ups, so if you're looking for email addresses, something along those lines, you want more engagement, low barrier offers work. [Christina McPhillips] 14:28:13 Um, retargeting is absolutely essential, so running a campaign online for many months will allow you to collect people. [Christina McPhillips] 14:28:22 And then you turn on a campaign later on, that's fundraising-based. So, always wanting to be gathering your audiences to retarget at a later time. [Christina McPhillips] 14:28:32 Um, internal note, clear goals. Get better results. Saying to each other. [Christina McPhillips] 14:28:37 We understand that this digital campaign we're gonna run is not fundraising-based, that's not the goal. The goal is to get eyeballs on the content that we offer as a station. Great, everybody is aligned in those goals. [Christina McPhillips] 14:28:48 keep going. And then finally, those really small budgets can definitely succeed. So, um… Next slide. I will go ahead and show you some. [Christina McPhillips] 14:29:00 local campaigns that we've run, and here's just a little, um, some little images, uh, and you can look at these more closely when we send the deck out. Next slide, please, sir. [Christina McPhillips] 14:29:10 So, first station that we work with in California, KPBS, um, they were promoting Radio Pledge, and we did a… campaign on Google in Meta. You can see the budget was about $3,600. I would say, in some cases, that could be a large budget. So for certain stations that are listening today, don't be scared off by $3,600, or I know Tyler was saying during his time, he ran a campaign of about $12,000 or $13,000. [Christina McPhillips] 14:29:39 Please don't be scared off by those numbers. You do not have to be doing those. [Christina McPhillips] 14:29:43 campaigns of those sizes. So, for this particular campaign, the results were about 250,000 impressions in that market. [Christina McPhillips] 14:29:52 Um, great click-through rates. And then, what I really want to highlight about this one is it's a small, well-targeted digital campaign. Um, it takes your pledge messaging and your fundraising messaging. [Christina McPhillips] 14:30:05 Um, off-broadcast, off… the air, and it's really speaking to people where they are as they float around their day on their phone, on their computer, that kind of thing. [Christina McPhillips] 14:30:15 Next slide. I love this one, and I think this one is indicative of what more stations should be doing, so IdeaStream Public Media took a podcast that they have that's also on YouTube, and we highlighted this for them, turned it into a campaign. So this is called Living for We. We spent $2,000 between April and September 2025, and we did it on Google, on YouTube, ran some meta ads. [Christina McPhillips] 14:30:41 Um, the goal, and this is what I said a moment ago, the goal is really to talk internally with station staff and say, what. [Christina McPhillips] 14:30:50 Do we care about when we're doing this? What are our goals? Are we okay with that, the fact that this will not generate a media revenue? [Christina McPhillips] 14:30:57 For us, because as fundraisers, we so often think, if it doesn't generate immediate revenue, it's not worth my time. And I think we're really talking about building future audiences here. [Christina McPhillips] 14:31:07 So this one informed the audience that this podcast existed. [Christina McPhillips] 14:31:13 that they should be paying attention to it, highlighted it, so it was increasing YouTube subscribers' engagement on the YouTube channel, increasing awareness of this podcast. [Christina McPhillips] 14:31:24 Um, 175,000 impressions, 25,000 video views, 11,000 YouTube subscribers. What I also love about this, if you can see. [Christina McPhillips] 14:31:34 Um, in the pie chart, the orange, that's a 35 to 44 year old audience. [Christina McPhillips] 14:31:39 That's not something that you're going to be reaching in the mail or on traditional broadcast. That's a younger, different audience. [Christina McPhillips] 14:31:47 And of course, they may not give right now, but we're laying the groundwork for future gifts. So… Uh, Tyler, next slide. [Christina McPhillips] 14:31:54 I love the local angle with this one. This is the Nashville PBS Whiskey Tasting, so… I think one of the other things I like about this is the first year we did this with the station, they… [Christina McPhillips] 14:32:08 They came to us and said, we need to turn something on right away to help sell tickets. [Christina McPhillips] 14:32:12 And that's what you can be doing. You can start these campaigns and run very short campaigns for the course of 2 weeks or 3 weeks, something along those lines. [Christina McPhillips] 14:32:22 But somewhere like Meta is a really beautiful place to sell a tangible item, to get someone to buy a ticket to something. So, that would be something that I would encourage you to test out. [Christina McPhillips] 14:32:32 So, targeted ads, local event, people that are interested in something like. [Christina McPhillips] 14:32:39 whiskey, follow brands like that, um, Meta, the goal was to sell out the event, and they definitely did. These are very attractive… ads, and I think they're eye-catching to people who are interested in this kind of thing. [Christina McPhillips] 14:32:53 And then I think the final true example I will give is a campaign we're running right now for PBS North Carolina. It's a lead generation campaign, and the goal is to, um, show people that, uh, PBS North Carolina's eGuide and, um, Experience North Carolina newsletter is out and about, something that they should. [Christina McPhillips] 14:33:14 Um, subscribe to. And so, so far, this campaign that's running right now has generated 6,000 new subscribers in the last couple months, and will continue running. This is a really small offering. [Christina McPhillips] 14:33:26 not very expensive. Um, so, on to the next slide. [Christina McPhillips] 14:33:33 You can use this when the deck is sent to you. Think about building your own campaign, and here's a little brief for you. [Christina McPhillips] 14:33:40 What's your local story? What's your station's goal? Is it awareness? Do you just want to make people aware that you have a podcast, or a newsletter, or something like that? [Christina McPhillips] 14:33:50 First, make them aware of that, then get their information, maybe they've signed up for the newsletter, maybe they've subscribed to YouTube, or listened to the podcast, and then many months later. [Christina McPhillips] 14:34:02 if not years later, you could perhaps be asking them for donations. You're building the audience by showing them the value that you have. [Christina McPhillips] 14:34:09 Um, what platform do you want to use? With the Nashville PBS Whiskey tasting, Meta was better to sell tickets, but in some cases, YouTube may be better for you. So, figuring out what platform you want to use. [Christina McPhillips] 14:34:21 And then what budget you want to try. I think it's great for stations to say, we're gonna allocate $10,000 this year to testing some of these things, so that. [Christina McPhillips] 14:34:30 You can, as the guys are gonna say and have said, you can try, test. [Christina McPhillips] 14:34:37 succeed, fail, learn, keep going, but everybody is on board because you've allocated a certain amount of funds to do something like this. [Christina McPhillips] 14:34:44 So it's not so scary. So with that, I will turn it over to Alex, and… Thank you. [Alex Curley] 14:34:51 Awesome. Thank you very much. Um, in case you missed it, I brought some goodies. [Alex Curley] 14:34:58 to share with the class in the form of some demos, please take a look. [Alex Curley] 14:35:02 at them, um, while I'm talking, if you like. [Alex Curley] 14:35:06 And maybe you'll be able to spot some, uh, some Easter eggs in one of them. [Alex Curley] 14:35:12 I'm really glad to be going last, um, because we talked a lot about the nitty-gritty. [Alex Curley] 14:35:19 of fundraising, but I wanted to zoom out a little bit and talk about. [Alex Curley] 14:35:25 The structure of fundraising in public broadcasting itself, and the unwritten rules that we generally adhere to. [Alex Curley] 14:35:35 Um, next slide, please. Uh, I picked two stations to pick on. Apologies if you're here and listening and watching this right now, um… But I have two sets of screenshots, right? One of them is from the week before, uh, Trump's inauguration in January. [Alex Curley] 14:35:56 The other one is from two days ago. What's the difference between these two screenshots? [Alex Curley] 14:36:01 Uh, the answer is obvious, because I wrote it down at the bottom, but it's that… We've started talking about the specific amounts that public media stations relied on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the percentage. [Alex Curley] 14:36:17 of our budgets that we relied on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for. That's something that we generally never really talked about before. I know that there are specific stations that… that have before, but I wrote. [Alex Curley] 14:36:31 fundraising materials for NPR for several years, and I facilitated custom promo requests. [Alex Curley] 14:36:38 In those years, and we would get about 1,000 custom promo requests, I don't ever remember. [Alex Curley] 14:36:44 dealing with the 30-second promo that talked about how much they relied on federal funding. [Alex Curley] 14:36:49 But we didn't necessarily need to, right? Like, it wasn't really… it wasn't really an issue until our federal funding. [Alex Curley] 14:36:56 Um, was at risk, and then it closed. Um, but the point is that we had an unwritten rule, right? [Alex Curley] 14:37:04 And we broke it, and it's working. Next slide, please. [Alex Curley] 14:37:10 So, uh, you may know me from my Substack, semi-public. I do a lot of data analysis and analytics, um, on the public media industry itself. I also launched Adapt a Station, which is a website that basically connects. [Alex Curley] 14:37:28 Um, visitors with a public station, public media station in need, right? It shows you exactly how much a station lost. [Alex Curley] 14:37:36 Uh, as a percentage of their revenue. from the federal funding rescissions. [Alex Curley] 14:37:43 Um, there were several rules that I broke, or if you think about, like, the traditional unwritten rules of. [Alex Curley] 14:37:49 fundraising, right? There's several that I broke, right? I talked about federal funding. [Alex Curley] 14:37:56 Usually, you want to send people directly to giving. You want to remove any barriers to giving as possible, and this is an intermediary step. [Alex Curley] 14:38:04 Right? Not only is it an intermediary step, but there are hundreds of stations that you can give to through this website, right? And then there's not a traditional pitch, hook, and ask. It's kind of adopt a station is the hook and the pitch and the ask all in one. [Alex Curley] 14:38:23 Uh, next slide, please. So what does that mean, right? Like, I wouldn't be talking about adaptation if it wasn't a success, right? We had 37,000 unique visitors in the first month. [Alex Curley] 14:38:37 Um, but the biggest number that I think about, I call it CTR. [Alex Curley] 14:38:42 Biggest number that I think about, it's really conversion rate. If you look in our first 30 days, we were just shy. [Alex Curley] 14:38:50 of a 50% conversion rate. It was crazy. And… Um, Brenda, I see your… I see your note. There are definitely stations that did talk about. [Alex Curley] 14:39:01 federal funding before. Generally, it's not something that I saw a lot before. [Alex Curley] 14:39:07 But I wanted to acknowledge your note. Um, but AdoptStation.org, first 30 days. [Alex Curley] 14:39:14 Nearly 50% of everybody who visited the website clicked on a link. [Alex Curley] 14:39:20 to a station or to a donation portal. That is an incredibly big number for a website like ours. And of course, interest has gone down a little bit after rescission. [Alex Curley] 14:39:33 package passed. Um, this is a campaign that we ran at the beginning of October. [Alex Curley] 14:39:38 you know, we had 2,400. unique visitors, probably not even coming close to the traffic that some of your station. [Alex Curley] 14:39:45 Website C, but there are two numbers on the right, right? 36% conversion rate, still very high, right, for… a station. I don't know how many of those people actually donated, but those are people who generally weren't going into your site before, right? This may be a completely different audience. [Alex Curley] 14:40:08 Uh, then, you know, who would be giving on your on-air drives, or… through your website. The other big number is… how much did I spend on AdaptStation.org? How much have I spent? [Alex Curley] 14:40:22 on AdaptStation.org, up until this moment, 3 months later, it's… the $7.50 that I bought. [Alex Curley] 14:40:29 you know, the adaptivestation.org, um… domain name with. Next slide, please. [Alex Curley] 14:40:35 So what does it matter, right? Adoptestation.org was an extremely low risk. [Alex Curley] 14:40:43 endeavor for me, because I knew that I could host it for free, right? I knew that it was $7.50. [Alex Curley] 14:40:50 To host it. Um… And I also don't work for a public media station, you know, at the same time, so… it's a little bit different for me, but, um… It also filled a need that wasn't happening. I put some steps to capturing opportunity, there's nothing new here, but I want to talk about two of them. [Alex Curley] 14:41:13 really quick. Number one is the most important, right? Like, if we're zooming out. [Alex Curley] 14:41:18 Right? And we're thinking about, like. changing the way that we fundraise. [Alex Curley] 14:41:25 Um, changing the structures that we use for fundraisers, it should be focused on what your audience is telling you, right? Like, what… Posts are they clicking on on Instagram? What pages are they visiting? [Alex Curley] 14:41:38 on your website. Um, you should also be asking, like, what gaps. [Alex Curley] 14:41:44 are… what gaps exist, right? Like, in our fundraising strategy, you should ask, what data am I missing, right? That would reveal. [Alex Curley] 14:41:54 That maybe would reveal a gap. in our fundraising strategy. Um, of course, and then, you know, identify those gaps when you see them. Scale risk. [Alex Curley] 14:42:04 take the amount of risks that you want to take and then add 30%, and… I really… you know, I want to… I want to stress that you don't have to change, you know, your on-air fundraising strategy, you don't have to change your traditional social media strategy, but… [Alex Curley] 14:42:23 I want to… encourage people to take small-scale risks. And I'll show you some examples of some small-scale risks. But small-scale risks that maybe break the rules. [Alex Curley] 14:42:36 Right? And in the slide before, I gave you permission. I gave you a doctor's note to take risks. Within reason, and to conduct experiments, and if it goes wrong, then you can blame it on me with your boss. Okay, next slide. [Alex Curley] 14:42:52 So that's the end of my slide. I created… three examples for you, all within 15 minutes while I was creating this… these slides. [Alex Curley] 14:43:02 Um, what I want… the reason why I made these is not to show this exact example how you would use this exact example in a fundraiser, but the idea. [Alex Curley] 14:43:13 of these examples, right? These are all extremely low-lift. I made them for free. [Alex Curley] 14:43:19 You know, the first one is a donation wheel. Somebody spends it, they get a donation amount. [Alex Curley] 14:43:24 recommended to them. You could take it to, like, a live event, right? You could embed it in your website. [Alex Curley] 14:43:30 there are bunches of different ways that you could do it. [Alex Curley] 14:43:32 Number two is not about the donation page, but I don't know if you saw it, this donation page actually triggers the lamp behind me, and somebody figured it out. There you go. Somebody figured it out during Christina's, uh, presentation, which I apologize, I didn't mean to send the links out that early. [Alex Curley] 14:43:52 Um, but if you think about, like, physical interactivity between a digital interface that your station runs, right, and maybe people who are pitching live. [Alex Curley] 14:44:04 Right? Like, maybe there's a light that goes off in your studio, maybe there's a silly sound that plays, maybe… whoever is pitching right now has to use the word meow, right, in the next sentence. [Alex Curley] 14:44:18 stuff to make it more interesting, more interactivity. The last one is a pretty basic, um, donation tracker, but… you know, that was easy to make, it's… interactive, you can reset it. [Alex Curley] 14:44:34 Um, and again, it's… for these three examples, it's about the idea of them, like. [Alex Curley] 14:44:40 how could you… how could you be inspired? Like, how could you add interactivity to your fundraiser? How could you add a new element that brings in. [Alex Curley] 14:44:50 a younger audience, right? Even if it's just a few hundred people, right? Scale, the amount of risk that you're taking. [Alex Curley] 14:44:57 building and deploying tools like these with. with how much you're willing to spend on it. [Alex Curley] 14:45:04 That is my presentation, so I'm going to send it back to Tom. [Tom Davidson] 14:45:10 Thanks, Alex, and I gotta say, making the light blink, I was one of those people banging on it, because I just can't… My friends who are in attendance will confess and tell you, I can't resist pressing a button if it makes a cute noise. [Tom Davidson] 14:45:26 There have been some interesting questions popping up in chat, and they've been answered a little bit over there, but I want to make sure that we don't. [Tom Davidson] 14:45:33 Um, just keep the conversation there. I want to pull it into this world. There was one that came from Nikki Bennett at Illinois Public Media, basically saying, well, what might I be able to do with as little as $200 or $300? And I want to ask both Christina and Tyler to talk about that. [Tom Davidson] 14:45:50 The Illinois Public Media in a mid-size or smaller market in the central part of the state. [Tom Davidson] 14:45:56 What could you do with as little as $250? Tyler, you take it first, and then Christina. [Tyler Smith] 14:46:01 Yeah. Thank you, and thank you for the question. I want to say, Christina, I answered that correctly, that the name of the game is Focus. [Tyler Smith] 14:46:09 Uh, there's some tactical stuff around making sure you're only on a few different placements in meta, you don't want to be on Marketplace, for example. [Tyler Smith] 14:46:15 But I would really ask you what your goal is, because if you are in a drive. [Tyler Smith] 14:46:22 although you want to… retarget your visitors, I'd recommend, first. [Tyler Smith] 14:46:27 Not retargeting your visitors. something I neglected to mention, and which I know Christina and I both shared, is you should be taking your donor lists, your actual donor lists of lapsed donors. [Tyler Smith] 14:46:38 of one-time donors. of prospects, and you should be targeting those folks, because if you can get that CPM number I mentioned earlier, where. [Tyler Smith] 14:46:48 $5, $10 reaches 1,000 people. If you have 10,000 lapsed donors, right? [Tyler Smith] 14:46:54 It's much less than $200 to $300, and the one other note I would say, this kind of is crazy to a lot of folks in public media, but when you pay for your search advertising, again, when you're doing, like, an on-air pledge drive. [Tyler Smith] 14:47:05 That's a great means, and I… very quickly gloss over this to convert broadcast demand to Chinese, um. [Tyler Smith] 14:47:14 conversion, right? Someone's searching for streaming WABC, KXYZ, something like that. [Tyler Smith] 14:47:20 Rather than going directly to the stream, they're just gonna see, hey, we need your help, uh, now's the time to donate, please throw us a few bucks, become a member for Xtars. [Tyler Smith] 14:47:28 That is the most efficient and most cost-effective way to do that. It has to be done from a paid account. [Tyler Smith] 14:47:34 Can't be done from a grant account. Lots of reasons for that, but that's why you have to pay two or three hundred bucks can do. [Tyler Smith] 14:47:40 10x or more on the return for that. [Tom Davidson] 14:47:42 And Christina, I want to spin that question a little bit, because you touched on this, but in my lizard brain, I wasn't quite sure if I was understanding it right. [Tom Davidson] 14:47:52 You seem to be talking about. Lead generation as a way of getting people who may be engaging with us on Facebook or YouTube or some podcast platform. [Tom Davidson] 14:48:02 Basically, to tell us who they are, because one of my biggest frustrations as a programmer back in the day is I've got all these people watching my content. [Christina McPhillips] 14:48:11 Yeah. [Tom Davidson] 14:48:11 on YouTube, and the bastards at Google and Alphabet won't tell me anything about who they are. [Tom Davidson] 14:48:17 Are you saying you have a way around that? [Christina McPhillips] 14:48:17 Yes. Yes, let them tell you who they are. [Tyler Smith] 14:48:22 Yeah. [Christina McPhillips] 14:48:23 Uh… You have, to the stations out there, you have something really valuable. You have interesting content, you have a great mission. [Christina McPhillips] 14:48:31 People should give their information, and a lot of times they will. If you've got a great newsletter, if you have a good podcast, a YouTube program, you can be doing things like app download campaigns, download our app. You can retarget them again. [Christina McPhillips] 14:48:47 They are your audience now. Uh, if you… we know of a station that we worked with where they had, um, tickets to… Goodness? Antiques Roadshow, thank you very much. Uh, and, and… All you had to do to be entered to win the tickets was give your email address and your information. These are things that your station already has. [Christina McPhillips] 14:49:09 that are valuable to the audience, that the audience will be willing to give. [Christina McPhillips] 14:49:13 their basic information to, and then that information is a lead, it is yours, and you can continue down the path of targeting those people again. [Christina McPhillips] 14:49:21 Um, Tyler, any thoughts on that? [Tyler Smith] 14:49:25 I… no, I concur. I also was seeing the sudden wave of, uh, really thoughtful questions that I'm chomping at the bit. [Tyler Smith] 14:49:32 Uh, to answer as well, but I… I agree, I think the thesis here, in part, is. [Tyler Smith] 14:49:37 And I'm gonna try and answer a few of these in answering this is… Folks are interested, they want you to reach out to them. [Tyler Smith] 14:49:45 And if you can do that consistently over time. [Tyler Smith] 14:49:47 In addition to other means of promotion. They will be willing to give you the information you're looking for. [Tyler Smith] 14:49:55 Uh, whether that's contact info or something like that, by having that conversation with them. [Tyler Smith] 14:49:59 Uh, over… over a… sustained period of time, that will lead them to the point of conversion, whether it's information about themselves in the mid-funnel, or contributing. [Tyler Smith] 14:50:09 Uh, later on. I don't want to… I don't want to jump the gun, though, Tom, so I… [Tom Davidson] 14:50:13 No, that's excellent. We got another question along the way, Randy Miller from Chemos asks, what I think is an interesting and provocative question about retargeting. If we've got all those lapsed. [Tyler Smith] 14:50:20 Yeah. [Tom Davidson] 14:50:23 Well, we know who they are, we know where they live, we may or may not have their email address, why not use those channels. [Christina McPhillips] 14:50:26 Yeah. [Tom Davidson] 14:50:30 what is it about some of these other digital channels that may be worth the investment? Either of you, take that one. [Tyler Smith] 14:50:37 Could you, uh, could I briefly… that was the one I was, like, chomping at the bit. I think it's such a good question, and I feel… I just want to say, in our community. [Christina McPhillips] 14:50:39 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. [Tyler Smith] 14:50:43 asking hard questions is, like, more important. It's kind of Alex's point, like, take the risk to ask questions that aren't… precious and delicate and friendly. [Tyler Smith] 14:50:52 Um, there's a few… there's a few things going on here. The first thing is, it's incredibly… cost-effective to do this, right? Compare 1,000 ads on digital, where people are used to being advertised to. I show data was $4.86. I'm sure Christine, $10, something like that? [Christina McPhillips] 14:50:59 Yes. [Christina McPhillips] 14:51:07 Yes, right. [Tyler Smith] 14:51:09 Other, uh, there's direct mail campaigns, which can be great for a very focused audience, but depending on where in their journey they are, it's prohibitively expensive, especially when you're asking us about. [Tyler Smith] 14:51:19 $200 for a campaign. The other thing is incredibly important, this is the second core point I made. [Christina McPhillips] 14:51:22 Okay. [Tyler Smith] 14:51:25 I made this in PMDMC when I had the opportunity to speak there, is… All marketing, whether it's fundraising or whether you're the biggest company in the world, is you're trying to stay present with your core prospects. [Tyler Smith] 14:51:35 And you… the more sophisticated you are, the more you, you know, leverage you have there. [Christina McPhillips] 14:51:35 Yep. [Tyler Smith] 14:51:40 But one touchpoint, right? If you mail something, even if you just post something, if you send one email, that's great. [Tyler Smith] 14:51:46 consider, like, car shopping, right? Does anyone just wake up and say, dang, I need a new car, I've never heard of any cars in a car shop, I'm just gonna walk to the lot and buy one? [Tyler Smith] 14:51:53 Not in 2025, where there's 16, whether it's admins, whether it's CarMax, whether it's the local dealer, there's 16 videos. In one afternoon, I could have 600 touchpoints. [Tyler Smith] 14:52:04 with 200 different brands. But the ones who get my business are the ones that are staying present with me with digital ads, with commercials, etc. That's why Nike pays. [Tyler Smith] 14:52:14 $6 trillion a year, approximately, to talk to you and enforce their brand. They're not selling you anything, they're just saying, look, uh, just do it, we're with athletes. [Tyler Smith] 14:52:23 And then they'll, at the very end of the year, look to promote their goods and services to you. That's why you need to stay present, make very focused investments, and that will. [Tyler Smith] 14:52:32 increase the number of donations you get per dollar. [Tyler Smith] 14:52:35 Uh, that you spend. [Christina McPhillips] 14:52:36 Yeah, I agree with everything that he said, and so let's imagine that you have your CRM, and you have. [Christina McPhillips] 14:52:45 20 years worth of data and 200,000 lapsed names that haven't given in the last, you know, 3 years to 20 or 30 years. [Christina McPhillips] 14:52:56 you would have to do a lot of work to find out who is good to target through something like direct mail. You can email those people, of course, but that, um… runs risks, too. But with something like what we're talking about, you can import a lot of those names into the platform that you're using. Some of them will be matched. [Christina McPhillips] 14:53:16 Some of them won't be matched, and to Tyler's beautiful point, it costs a fraction of what it would cost to mail those people, or to do modeling to find out if those donors are still good to use. [Christina McPhillips] 14:53:27 So this is a really good way to harvest some of those audiences that you already have. Use what you already have. I love… I think that speaks to the $200 and $300, um, available, too. So, anyway, I love it. [Tom Davidson] 14:53:41 There were a couple questions that came in that I want to try and frame up this way. We've talked a little bit about top-of-the-funnel marketing. [Tom Davidson] 14:53:48 Building awareness, doing some look-alike campaigns, and you guys had some beautiful discussions about that. [Tom Davidson] 14:53:53 Back at PMDMC. We've talked about retargeting towards the bottom of the funnel. [Tom Davidson] 14:53:59 But Julie from KPBS asked an excellent question about what do we do with this surge of donations and of new donors we've seen since the rescission vote? [Tom Davidson] 14:54:08 How can we ensure that we remain engaged with those people so that 6 months, a year from now, we can get more money out of them. [Tom Davidson] 14:54:18 Not just this one-time bump that Alex was talking about earlier. What ideas do you guys have in terms of, sort of, that. [Tom Davidson] 14:54:26 ongoing below-the-funnel re-engagement. [Tyler Smith] 14:54:30 Right, I think that actually, Tom, that, uh, and this is a good question, that starts to go back to what Christina and I were sort of just saying, is… You have a list, an actual list and a spreadsheet, and you only need to know first name, last name, email. [Tyler Smith] 14:54:42 That list of that donate… again, I mentioned LAPS, but this is first… first-time donors is a great pool to conduct, and the members. [Tyler Smith] 14:54:49 members that you want to get up to mid-level. [Tyler Smith] 14:54:52 identify them, upload them to your ed networks, right? If you have the means, right, and you're sufficient… a larger major market station, that could be Meta, that could be Reddit, it could be YouTube. [Tyler Smith] 14:55:02 Say it's just Reddit, you're mid-market, you're lower, uh, and like, in terms of your budget. [Tyler Smith] 14:55:07 just by simply having one touchpoint a week with them, and showing them what you're doing, right? Promote your post to an audience that that is that list. [Tyler Smith] 14:55:15 You're not, um, to be clear, and you saw some of this, you're not just saying. [Tyler Smith] 14:55:19 Um, contribute now. The point is, what is brand marketing? Is in between the drive for fall right now, which we're just wrapping up for most stations. [Tyler Smith] 14:55:28 and year-end, you have maybe a month and a half till Giving Tuesday? What are you going to say to them? You have an opportunity to talk to them once a week, six to eight times, and say. [Christina McPhillips] 14:55:33 Yes. [Tyler Smith] 14:55:37 Your gift is wonderful, here's what we're doing with it. [Tyler Smith] 14:55:40 What happens at the end of the year, right, when they see what it's doing, they want to dump some tax dollars and say, wow, they've done great work, uh, with… I've given… I trust them. [Tyler Smith] 14:55:48 I see their mission, and I'm going to contribute again for the next fiscal cycle. [Christina McPhillips] 14:55:53 Yes, and I really like that you've put sort of a timeline on it as you're creating this, you know, visual, if you will. Okay, so we're talking about Giving Tuesday, or we're talking about year-end, or something along those lines. [Christina McPhillips] 14:56:04 Sit down with your team and say, what are the podcasts that we have that are interesting and of value? What are the shows that we have that are interesting and of value? [Christina McPhillips] 14:56:14 Turn those into some ad campaigns that you're going to run, show your audiences that you have great offerings, engage them. [Christina McPhillips] 14:56:24 And tell, as Tyler has said, the things that you're doing with their money, but, um, I think a lot of this goes back to sitting down and doing some really good planning prior to these timeframes. So, meet with your teams. [Christina McPhillips] 14:56:37 find your value, communicate it out. [Tom Davidson] 14:56:42 We've had some conversation going on in chat about loyalty, loyalty programs. I don't know about you guys, I got 3 different loyalty cards for grocery stores in my wallet right now. [Tom Davidson] 14:56:52 Um, Alex, you know, I just think of these things from a product and technology point of view, like you do too. First, how difficult is it to tie in off a CRM's API and build in loyalty for frequent donations? [Tom Davidson] 14:57:06 or other forms of interaction, and then Tyler and Christina, if we were to have systems like that. [Tom Davidson] 14:57:13 What's the value in sort of increasing that. Rate of engagement, that ongoing conversation with people. [Alex Curley] 14:57:20 I think, uh, not to… Um, not to make too sharp a point, but I think the real question is, like, and this even goes back to getting an influx of new donors. It's like, what is the data about those new donors, or your existing donor. [Alex Curley] 14:57:39 existing donor base telling you? Right? Like, are these people who would appreciate a loyalty program? Because CRMs are incredibly capable. [Alex Curley] 14:57:51 Um, I… you could absolutely do it, and I bet there is a station out there that could find success doing it, but really the… The beginning question is, like, whether this is an audience that. [Alex Curley] 14:58:04 would support, right, like a loyalty program. And when we're talking about, like, new donors, I'm assuming this may not be the right assumption, but generally on adopt-A-Station. [Alex Curley] 14:58:16 all the new donors, they're younger, right? Like, they're millennial and younger. Um, even if you have a very basic setup for your donations, you can make. [Alex Curley] 14:58:28 you know, inferences and assumptions based on. you know, the aggregate of those. [Alex Curley] 14:58:36 donors from the data that they give you. Like, when did they give? Did you get a bunch of donors during a specific time of day? [Alex Curley] 14:58:42 Right? Do they give… do you ask for any identifying information when they're giving? [Alex Curley] 14:58:49 What level are they giving at? Like, are all these donations, like, $5, $3, or are they bigger? [Alex Curley] 14:58:56 Right, so when we talk about ideas like loyalty points, it's more about… it's more about, like, what is the data telling you? [Alex Curley] 14:59:05 will your audience appreciate it, and will… I think you should always take a risk, but you should be appropriately sizing that risk for your audience, and I am very interested to hear what Tyler and Christina. [Alex Curley] 14:59:21 say about that? [Christina McPhillips] 14:59:26 One of the things you were saying, sort of, I was reading some of the chat, but sort of made me think, um. [Christina McPhillips] 14:59:32 We always, and this is kind of an offshoot of what you've said, we always say that people come in. [Christina McPhillips] 14:59:38 making their first ever gift in a way that's most comfortable for them, and they will probably continue to give through that channel. [Christina McPhillips] 14:59:46 Um, so… I'm trying to think some… [Christina McPhillips] 14:59:53 Tyler, I might throw it to you. [Tyler Smith] 14:59:55 Yeah, no, no, I, um, I think we've kind of gone a field of it. I think… a little above, I would say, the fundraising paragraph, but just in terms of member benefits, like, my thing would be, wouldn't. [Tyler Smith] 15:00:06 wooden points effectively be, remember, like, the more you spend, the more you get in your membership and your friends' relationship anyway, you know, the more… the more swipes in my coffee shop card, the more… free stuff I get. Um, nonetheless, if that's your system. [Tyler Smith] 15:00:19 The thesis that I had is, you have an audience. [Christina McPhillips] 15:00:19 Yeah. Yeah. [Tyler Smith] 15:00:21 Cultivate your audience, distribute your content to. to your audience, and regardless of who's some. [Tyler Smith] 15:00:27 Question about this is, content that public media makes is great. That's why it's wonderful to be a vendor serving this space. [Tyler Smith] 15:00:33 The opportunity is how to make the investment, shrewdly, to have that content reaching the other 98% of people. [Tyler Smith] 15:00:41 that aren't actually seeing it right now, because they're fired up and they're ready. [Tyler Smith] 15:00:44 the way to, you know, 2026 success is by doing that thoughtfully. [Christina McPhillips] 15:00:49 Mm-hmm, agree. [Tom Davidson] 15:00:51 Uh, David, uh, David threw out a question there aimed at Alex that reminds me of sort of the. [Tom Davidson] 15:00:58 Borderline nasty questions I used to throw out to my dev team and my product managers all the time. [Tom Davidson] 15:01:04 what David asked is, is there a prediction model? Anything that can kind of help to prove that. [Tom Davidson] 15:01:09 stations that run these sort of experiments, stations that do this sort of innovation, do they end up better off in the long run than those that stick with some of the tried-and-true methods? [Tom Davidson] 15:01:19 Alex, I'm going to put you on the spot to say maybe, and then maybe we all gang up on you and say, you should build. [Tom Davidson] 15:01:26 that. [Alex Curley] 15:01:27 Yeah, I'll… yeah, I'll say all of that all at once. No, I… So, like I was saying, right, take small. [Alex Curley] 15:01:34 take small risks if you can only take a small risk. You know, don't stop doing… your broadcast funding drives, or, you know, your social media. [Alex Curley] 15:01:44 you know, outreach, you don't have to stop doing that. You can appropriately size the risks that you take. [Alex Curley] 15:01:52 Um, and it's… it's easy, right? Like, if you're talking about a loyalty program. [Alex Curley] 15:01:56 to me, actually, that does sound like a lot of… a lot of work, but, you know, if you have a lot of people who are asking for it, or if there's something in the market that's. [Alex Curley] 15:02:08 similar, and it's a concept that you're listeners and viewers are… are familiar with, that they do a lot anyway, then, you know, then that's… then that's worth it. Um, I'm certain that there's… you could probably track. [Alex Curley] 15:02:24 a station over several years and come up with some model to see whether it's working or not, but… I would say that… If you keep doing the same thing, then you're… you're probably not gonna grow the same as… [Christina McPhillips] 15:02:40 Yes. [Alex Curley] 15:02:40 stations who may take risks. Obviously, that's not based on… that's not based on data, but if you're not taking risks, then you're not reaching new people. [Alex Curley] 15:02:50 or you're not retaining these new people who are coming. [Tyler Smith] 15:02:54 time and chatting. [Tom Davidson] 15:02:54 We want to be cognizant of time. We're getting up towards the top of the hour, and we know many of our guests have to bail out. As for myself, I'm happy to stick around and keep the conversation going. [Tom Davidson] 15:03:06 Just recognizing that some of the attendees may have to go do other things. [Tom Davidson] 15:03:11 There was one thing that kept flying by in the chat that I wanted to make sure we got back to, which is… You know, there's lots of data out there. Cdp's published some stuff in Current, um, I think, Christina, one of your slides, uh, alluded to this, and we've all talked offline about. [Tom Davidson] 15:03:25 The donors coming in during this rescission bump. are tending to be significantly younger than our traditional cohorts. [Christina McPhillips] 15:03:35 Yeah. [Tom Davidson] 15:03:35 Thoughts, Christina, about. How do we stay engaged with those people? What might we do to make sure that this wasn't just a one-time expression of love that we're not able to turn into long-term. [Christina McPhillips] 15:03:41 So I want to say we are seeing this across sectors, so outside of public media, we are seeing these kinds of, um. [Tom Davidson] 15:03:48 you know, customer lifetime value. What are some of the things you and your team are thinking about? [Christina McPhillips] 15:04:00 I would call them disaster fundraising in some ways, and the reason I call them that is because I started out with the Red Cross, um, during Haiti and a couple of those other things, and we had disaster donors who would make those. [Christina McPhillips] 15:04:12 Gifts en masse, passionate gifts. And then you would go 2 months down the road, 6 months down the road, and the organization would sort of write them off, and not contact them anymore, not flow them into the regular fundraising processes. [Christina McPhillips] 15:04:24 And you'd get 5 years down the road, and those people had, um, not been contacted in years. [Christina McPhillips] 15:04:30 Please do the opposite of that. Please continue contacting these people, these young audiences who are giving now in this time of urgent fundraising or disaster fundraising, or whatever you want to label it, um, may continue to give because they care about your mission. [Christina McPhillips] 15:04:46 So, flow them into your normal processes, that's what we're recommending to all of the other types of nonprofits we work with. Don't let these people go. They may not give another donation for 10 years because they don't have the disposable income at this time to do so, especially if they're a younger donor. [Christina McPhillips] 15:05:02 It doesn't mean they should ever be off your file. Keep working on them. [Tom Davidson] 15:05:07 That's excellent. There's a lot more I could ask. In fact, I'm intrigued about whether you flow them into your regular flow, whether you set up a separate one, but we are at time, and Chad is… is nagging us, darn him, keeping us accountable to start to wrap things up. [Tom Davidson] 15:05:21 This has been a fantastic session. I asked a bunch of what-if questions of Chad and Amber and David a few weeks ago, and it turned into something that was, you know, beyond my hopes in terms of. [Tom Davidson] 15:05:33 just thoughtful and inspiring conversations. I'm thrilled to have been even a part of it, and I want to express my personal thanks to Christina, to Tyler, to Alex for their ideas. [Tom Davidson] 15:05:45 And their enthusiasm, as well as to all of you who attended, because you guys are doing the hard work. [Tom Davidson] 15:05:50 Each and every day, in tough times, out at stations, thank you for what you're doing. [Tom Davidson] 15:05:55 Chad, appreciate your hosting us. I'll turn it back to you to wrap up. [Chad Davis] 15:05:56 Yep. Thank you. Um, there were some questions of whether we will have this recording available. We will have this recording available, um, so, uh, look for that. [Chad Davis] 15:06:07 Amber just stuck the link in the chat. Um, sometimes we email the links out too, don't we, Amber? Like, so if you were registered, you might also find it. [Chad Davis] 15:06:16 In your inbox. Um, thank you for the feedback for the first time that we at PMI have tried to do a sort of development revenue topic, and we were not sure. [Chad Davis] 15:06:23 what the response would be. But, um, seeing that sort of, uh, late in the webinar, uh. [Chad Davis] 15:06:29 boom of chat, uh, activity was really… was really heartening, so we'll keep that in mind. [Chad Davis] 15:06:36 Thank you, Tom, Alex, Tyler, Christina. Again, much appreciated. Thanks to Mike and Karen at Current, thanks to NETA. Our next webinar will be November 20th, um, and. [Chad Davis] 15:06:49 you will have… oh, there's the link, thank you, Amber. Always prompt with that. And then our next Innovate with Current webinar is slotted. [Chad Davis] 15:06:55 for January, and uh… so look for that announcement to come out probably mid-November, so… Everyone have a great, uh, rest of your October, uh, and yeah, hang in there.