Sense of Community:
Planning & Tools

Putting "Sense of Community" to Work

The Sense of Community theme can help integrate your development activities with its powerful message to your listeners, givers, and current and prospective underwriters.

The Sense of Community campaign is designed to weave through your on-air and off-air fundraising activities, your on-air promotion activities, and your underwriting efforts.

While it does not replace what you are doing now, the Sense of Community message might change how you go about parts of your business. For example, the "public radio community" pitch will bring more of a barn-raising mentality to your pledge drives. As a result, you will probably find that you can become less reliant on premiums or a "Home Shopping Network" approach during your drives.

The Fundraising Materials

AUDIENCE 98^® tells us that listeners give because of their total use of the station. For that reason, the Sense of Community materials are designed to work across programs and formats. You will find that many of the materials reference specific types of programming – such as news. You are encouraged to change any of these references so that the materials reflect the programming on your station.

If your station happens to carry a lot of network programming, using a "find and replace" function in a word processing program will help you more easily customize the spots.

For example, you might carry This American Life. To insert the name of This American Life in the direct mail letters and spots, designate it as WEEKEND PROGRAM 1. Use "find and replace" to save time customizing the materials. A list of all of the "find and replace" keywords is at the beginning of each file of scripts, promos, and letters.

Note: Spot number 3 requires some customization that cannot be done through "find and replace."

Finally, these materials are designed to get you started. Use them to get the Sense of Community message going. You will want to create additional materials, based on this theme, on your own.

Create a "Sense of Community" Plan

Advance planning is the best way to integrate these materials into current activities. If you want to use the Sense of Community message in your Fall pledge drive, request materials from your program providers early. Begin the on-air promotion spots in September. Use the direct mail letters in your renewal or additional gift cycle once the spots are on the air. Coordinate the introduction of new underwriting packages with the airing of the spots.

Using the On-Air Promos 

Two pieces of copy are provided for on-air promotion. They should be edited and adapted into additional scripts so you have plenty of versions on hand. Pre-record these versions using on-air talent and music. Produce them as image spots for a high quality product.

Run two promos in an Optimum Effective Schedule (OES) for two weeks.

Run two different promos OES for two more weeks.

Cut the number of spots in half after that, rotating different versions of the promos throughout the schedule.

About An Optimimum Effective Schedule

OES is used to quickly build awareness among large segments of your audience. Follow this formula:

Cume/AQH = Turnover Ratio
Turnover Ratio * 3.29 = Number of spots to run each week.

This will likely work out to between 50 and 70 spots. Don't be shy about this. It works! Rotate spots randomly throughout the entire program schedule.

Using the On-Air Drive Materials

The Sense of Community campaign comes with on-air spots and scripts that address The 4Rs of Giving.   These materials are designed to help listeners recognize:

• their reliance on public radio,
• the personal importance of public radio, and
• their role as individuals in the public radio community.

The on-air spots can be recorded locally or you can send them to the network program producers for custom spots. Be sure to meet their deadlines!

We've also included two spots to support your direct mail efforts. You can use this in rotation with the on-air promos – or in place of them for a while – after you drop your direct mail.

Premiums

VisABILITY of Lyons, Colorado contributed the logo design for the Sense of Community campaign that you see on every screen of this report.  For information about the Sense of Community campaign t-shirts and mugs, please visit the VisABILITY web site or call 303-823-0327.

– John Sutton
AUDIENCE 98 Associate

 

Audience Research Analysis
Copyright © ARA and CPB.  All rights reserved.
Revised: September 01, 2000 12:38 PM.