Fundraisers Getting Paid Well

[aaronread]

Someone in public broadcasting once told me that in all the years of working at one particular station, this person has never once been introduced to a board member; this despite the fact he/she is the local host of one of the more popular and listened too radio programs on the air.

I've worked for colleges for over ten years. This November was the first time I've met a Trustee. So what? Why would everyone at a radio station NEED to meet with all the Directors/Trustees? It's like if you were an IT director and you'd never met the Sales director...you wouldn't bat an eye. Your jobs don't overlap, probably your physical office spaces rarely overlap...there's no reason to meet. Save perhaps at the office Christmas party.

 

[alw]

I'm not suggesting replacing The American Experience or Nova with reruns of the Three Stooges, but instead air more programs like Ken Burn's classics "Baseball" or the "Civil War"
Trust me if PBS had more shows like that, the "Average Joe" would be more than willing to donate money for quality programming.

For the most part the "small fry" donations simply keep the local affiliates going and pay for the day to day programming. There aren't enough small fries to do that and produce constant Boffo, spectaculars like the Ken Burns classics or 3 Tenors. It takes Burns years and MILLIONS of dollars to take on a project of that magnitude. For those projects very deep pockets are required.

I'm not defending or justifying anything......but that's the way it works.

P.S. I've met every one of our board members.

 

[Philip_Airtime]

As for Board of Directors; many of them could care less about the daily operations of the stations they serve. For some it's just padding their resume or, as the Monkees' song goes, "living in status symbol land." They can attend their cocktail parties and while passing the Gray Poupon tell their elite friends how they are sitting members of the Board of Directors of .........station.

I know, VOR, you don't say "all" and that you used the words "many" and "some." But I still bristle at your generalization about public broadcastig board members. My station has an advisory board. Like ALW, I, too, have met my board members. In fact, I'm always invited to attend the board meetings. I can't speak highly enough about our board chairman. He cares deeply about our station. He's a passionate advocate for us. He's not doing this for "status." Are there board members like the ones VOR describes? I would be a fool to say no. But I would argue the vast majority do care and are serving on public broadcasting boards for the right reasons!

 

[SirRoxalot]

Non-com is Not Non-compete

This thread seems to indicate that there's a significant difference in the way things are at different public broadcasting outlets in different cities.

I have my problems with what some of the top people in Buffalo are being paid, but it sounds like some of the top folks in Rochester outdoing them by a significant amount.

One thing to keep in mind is that a $400,000 line item for "compensation" is really more like a $275K salary plus benefits. The feds, state, SSI, and the rest add 35% to 40% to almost any salary. Next, you have to ask how much it's worth to the group to find someone who can ride herd on the people required to keep track of all the rules and regs imposed on TV and radio stations by the FCC, NPR, PBS, federal and station regulation for not-for-profit groups, SEC and other regulations for endowment funds, etc. Add the responsibility for shaking down people with very deep pockets for large amounts of money, as well as overseeing fund raising schemes, and you've got a job that very few people are qualified to do. Could you get someone for $250K, and be able to hire an additional part-timer? Maybe, but how much money would be lost as the new "Czar" established relationships with large corporate and private donors?

In Buffalo, we have significant differences in the way that Public Broadcasting is administered by different stations. The WNED group operates significantly differently than the WBFO group, which is under the aegis of UB and the State Education Department. WBNY at Buffalo State is a wholly different entity as a student-run non-commercial radio station. Even within WNED, the pay scales appear to be significantly different between TV, AM, and FM.

Now, like commercial radio, everyone is paying much closer attention to return on investment in anticipation of funding drops in the near term. I'm sure that greater scrutiny will be imposed on all levels. Like commercial broadcasting, I also suspect that cuts will be made from the bottom up, and in middle management, but not from the top down.

 

[The Voice of Reason]

If you please, allow me to respond to some of the comments to my post regarding Boards of Directors.

To ALW: You work in management; therefore you should have contact with WNED’s Board of Directors. If you didn’t I would, if I were you, be concerned about my job. You are correct that documentaries, like the ones Ken Burns produced, were underwritten by major sponsors like General Motors. What about your local documentaries; who sponsors them? Could it be the money raised from the “Small Fry” contributors?

To Aaronread: Maybe you don’t see the need for a Board of Directors to have contact with employees but let me tell you a true story. At the company I work for the late owner, when he was alive, made it a point to get to know everyone who worked for him. He once told me that a smile, handshake, inquiry about ones’ family makes employees not only feel appreciated , but gives them more of an incentive to work harder. He also made sure that his Board of Directors were introduced to employees at our yearly holiday parties in December. And the company I work for employs a lot of people.

To Philip Airtime: You are absolutely right that not all Board of Directors don’t care about the future of the stations they represent. But if you were going to equate percentages, I would bet the house that a larger percentage of board members are more interested in their own well-being and status than they are the employees who work for them.

To: Sir Roxalot: Here is a challenge for you. Do some research and find out the salaries paid out to CEOs of the public broadcasting stations across New York State, minus New York City. I did and found out there are vast differences in both salaries and compensation.
What was amazing is that the GM of one station was paid far less that the CEO of another station, even though the first GM’s station made three-times the amount of money during fund raising drives than the second. Plus I discovered that the first GM’s station is in a city with less population than the second.
And finally you are correct that there will be layoffs this year and they will start from the bottom up. Those cuts will be deep and a number of good people will lose their jobs in an economy that is struggling from sliding into a depression.

All I can say to all four of you gentlemen is good luck, God Bless, and I hope that your individual operations make it through the year without having to deal with telling someone they no longer have a livelihood.

 

[audio4tv]

D&C publishes a correction

In today's Democrat & Chronicle, there is a correction to the fundraising article concerning WXXI. The paper had reported WXXI lost money, when it actually made money on the campaign reported in the AG's report. The paper printed it had "incorrectly characterized a 2007 fundraising campain by WXXI." In addition, the station " exceeds or meets industry standards for efficient fundraising and other operations" as rated by Charity Navigator, a national charity watchdog group. It reported on page 2 of of the front section of Friday's paper. As of this posting, there is no article on the D&C website.

 

[The Voice of Reason]

http://interactive.wxxi.org/highlights/letter-editor

Here is a response to the newspaper article from the CEO of WXXI.

 

[listener-in]

While it’s a relief that WXXI made money on this fund-raising event, Mr. Silverstein didn’t say how much. According to the correction in the Democrat and Chronicle, if this is indeed accurate, it was the princely sum of $80 for an outlay of 15 grand. To be fair, it’s reasonable to guess that the station only employs professional fund-raisers between the major on-air fund-drives in which it gets the bulk of its pledges. However, it’s interesting that it took the D & C article for the CEO to volunteer information, limited as it was, that might not otherwise have been readily forthcoming.

I’m not suggesting everything should be itemized in fine detail, but members should be trusted enough to be shown the books once a year - standard procedure in all kinds of organizations. Please, WXXI, show some confidence in your members’ scrutiny and input. Especially in hard times, you can only benefit.

 

[The Voice of Reason]

While it’s a relief that WXXI made money on this fund-raising event, Mr. Silverstein didn’t say how much. According to the correction in the Democrat and Chronicle, if this is indeed accurate, it was the princely sum of $80 for an outlay of 15 grand. To be fair, it’s reasonable to guess that the station only employs professional fund-raisers between the major on-air fund-drives in which it gets the bulk of its pledges. However, it’s interesting that it took the D & C article for the CEO to volunteer information, limited as it was, that might not otherwise have been readily forthcoming.

I’m not suggesting everything should be itemized in fine detail, but members should be trusted enough to be shown the books once a year - standard procedure in all kinds of organizations. Please, WXXI, show some confidence in your members’ scrutiny and input. Especially in hard times, you can only benefit.

What I found interesting is that the D&C, which has always been “tight” with WXXI, never printed Silverstein’s letter either on line or in the regular Saturday paper. Maybe the editors at the D&C were not happy with Silverstein’s comment that the reporter who wrote the article should have contacted the station to gather more information for the story, which I happen to agree with.
Now in his letter to the editor, Mr. Silverstein said the WXXI made over 3 million dollars. I just wonder out of that 3 million, how much went to pay only Silverstein’s six-figure salary, but also the salaries of the top five wage earners at the station? If that’s the case then deduct over (I estimate) $600,000 from that three million dollar figure.