Hi, I’m Jennifer Whiteside, Director of Membership at VPM (based in Richmond, VA). We are a dual-licensee station. I oversee on-air pledge campaigns for TV and radio. For radio, we operate two stations…VPM News and VPM Music. I’ve been with VPM for five years, starting first in Major Gifts. I’ve been in my current position for two years. I worked in fundraising at various performing arts non-profits before coming to public media.
Over the course of the last two years or so, we’ve dramatically reimagined our on-air pledge campaigns. We are now 100% pre-recorded, except for a small amount of ad-lip from on-air hosts on the radio stations. We like having more control over the messaging (both content and length). Additionally, we offer fewer “pledge events” on TV and don’t utilize “pledge breaks” on FM, instead opting to insert pledge messaging around our core programming. We’ve received a lot of positive feedback from our community for the format changes, but I want to make sure we are still maximizing the revenue for each campaign.
I realize our format may be an anomaly, but I’m really eager to learn from other stations during this course.
