Last week!

I send out a follow up email to all of our sponsors, and I received some great replies (although not entirely constructive ones).

By following up I was able to get another donation from Barnie's (which they could not give online because their company card was an AMEX). Many commented on the person they talked to, and all the feedback was positive (besides the lack of replies from some).

I was also able to secure free mailing from the post office in trade for underwriting for the Rollins post office, and that spot is in the works currently. 

I am also working with a music company called Highway Ent Management that want to underwrite a month. Things are definitely not as dull as I thought they would be, even after the concert has ended! 

Finally, I am taking the E-Commerce account we used for vendor fees into a site that will allow underwriters to pay online (even though I will have to confirm they pay the correct amount). This is hopefully make it easier to get payments from advertisers that are not local and do not want to have to mail a check. 

Donation and Pledge Mail

It took much longer to get out the pledge and donation mail than I had previously expected. To all donors, we sent out an official thank you letter, along with a pair of WPRK sunglasses and a bumper sticker to thank them for their contribution. It felt especially good to send these out to people who had donated from other states and farther away, such as Miami and even Illinois. It took at least four hours to write out all of the addresses, return stamp the mail, and manually fill all of the envelopes. It took even longer to organize all the pledge mail, which included a thank you letter, a pledge card for them to fill out, stamped letter address to the Rollins College Gift Lock Box, and sunglasses or a bumper sticker or another item (like CD or gift card) that they may have been promised when they pledged. It was important to send the promised item to the correct person; however, this made the process even more time consuming. All of the mail was finally put together by the end of this weekend, and will be out by Monday tomorrow.
While it was a lot of work, it was worth it to actually go through with something that may have been left behind or not followed through with in the past. That being said, it was a ton of work that I ended up doing by myself, so other things that I had planned to get done this week were neglected... I wanted to send out a follow up email with the fund-a-thon interview recordings; however, somehow the fund-a-thon was not fully recorded and I could find none of the interviews. This is will be an important aspect of a future fundraiser that I will make sure to pay more attention to. I can still send out the follow-up e-mails, but it is unfortunate that by this time, the e-mails are three weeks after the end of the fundraiser. These are things that are neglected because it is simply too much work for a full-time student to do all of these things in time; I wish that there was some way to give incentives to staff to go beyond the simple necessities of the station. The concert showed that we can do amazing things when we put our minds to it, however, we could do even more with more resources and incentives for students to put an effort into working at the station.

Post-Concert

After our big event, there were still many loose ends to tie up in the business department. Personally, I was responsible for turning in all of the donations collected throughout the week and during the festival to the Rollins Donation Office. I worked with Leslie, Tairi, and Amanda Ward to make sure everything was in the right place. I also coordinated with Rob to make sure that all the sales money was put together and given over to OSIL, including t-shirt sales and vendor fee checks.
I also worked with Charlotte, our Donor Relations Coordinator position, to create "thank you for donating" letters and "thank you for pledging, here is how to pledge" letters. I printed out the list of online donors from the E-Commerce website, and we compared it to the pledge list, marking off those who had pledged and then already donated online (which was about 5 people). We coordinated with print services to print these letters nicely, as well as the post office to be able to pay for shipping of sunglasses and other items promised to donors and pledgers. This is still an on-going process, and we are looking to have this all out by next week.

Fund-a-Thon Week and 60th Concert!

Monday
WPRK kicked off the fundraiser nice and early at 7 a.m. We received our first donation at 8:49 a.m. for $544, and then gained more pledges after that. Our next online donation came at noon for $25, along with our free lunch from Wrap Planet. These were the only online donations for the day, but it was a good start for the first day of getting the url www.helpwprk.org out there and repeated.
Total in pledges: $466.50
Total in donations: $569.00

Tuesday
Tuesday was good food day! We had some great food contributers come in this day, including Jason from Barnie's CoffeeKitchen, Craif from NYPD pizza (who brought us ten pizzas for lunch and dinner!), Jeff from Blue Bird Bake Shop, and Mari from Heavenly Flan. It was a day of great food and entertainment. Even though we raised less than Monday's two donors put together, this $ amount was a combination of 14 donors - so the donation url was definitely getting out there.
Total in pledges: $615.00
Total in donations: $431.50

Wednesday
Wednesday also had some great entertainment and food. We began having donations of $91.50... A number we had not even thought to promote! Eat More Produce and Park Plaza both contributed meals. We continued to have a consistent number of pledges and donations throughout the day.
Total in pledges: $530.00
Total in donations: $525.50

Thursday
The Thursday Fund-a-thon continued as usual, with the exception of a $850 donation from one person! Tijuana Flats and SoNapa both contributed food for us. That night, Club WPRK was all the rage! (Most) all director staff showed up, and we collected donations at the door. The online stream worked perfectly and all of our DJs rocked. We collected $300 in donations at the door alone, as well as $250 more from drink sales donated by the Peacock Room. I talked to DJ Mo about possibly doing a monthly Peacock Room fundraiser; we shall see.
Total in pledges: $470.00
Total in donations: $2,118.00

Friday
Friday wrapped up the week with a bunch of online as well as in person donations. We had some great food from Dandelion Cafe and Aroma Italian Grill. Friday night we had a screen printing party, where we raised some donations for original, printed by Taylor WPRK t-shirts. It was a very popular event, and Taylor could hardly keep up with the number of people who wanted shirts. This would be a great event to do again in the future.
Total in pledges: $1,502.00
Total in donations: $1,001.50

Saturday
The final event! Besides having a great time, we raised over $500 in donations at the door, and sold 12 of the t-shirts left over from the screen printing party ($120). The whole concert went well. We should be receiving checks from Shipyard and Enemy Ink for a cut of their drink and t-shirt sales. The beer and the shirts were both very popular, so we should be getting a good amount from those businesses.
Total in donations: $600.00
Total in sales: $120.00

While there were was room for improvement in many areas of the concert, for the first huge concert event on Rollins campus, I think everything went really well. We did not reach our goal of $30,000... but I will take the ~$5,500 in donations and ~$8,500 in pledges we did raise any day! I am so proud of the team we had this semester!!

March 20-26

This week has been pretty slow. I am glad that Charlotte Davis is finally back working with us. She has created a constant contact list for us to contact those who pledge a donation during the Fund-a-Thon. Rob and Justin also got our donation site to be redirected to helpwprk.org, to make it easier to direct people to donate to us.
There is a lot planning to do for the week of the Fund-a-thon, and I am a little worried about how smoothly it is going to run. At this point in time we had hoped to have all the food contributors, bands, and community members scheduled, however, there are definitely holes in the scheduling. The concert looks like it will be a blast, however, I am a little worried about how effective the fundraiser will be in raising donations (especially when our goal is $30,000+).
Right now an important goal is to promote the 60th Anniversary and Fund-a-thon in all ways possible, which means helping the promotions team. Another important event coming up is Club WPRK night with DJ Mo on April 5. There I am going to collect donations at the door, as well as afterwords collect proceeds from the Peacock Room. I am very excited to make this happen, and I hope that we will see a lot of people come out and support WPRK, as well as enjoy their Thursday night.

March 12- 19

The donation account for WPRK is officially set up at:
https://bannerweb.rollins.edu/prod/owa/pkg_ecomm.p_basic_send?orderType=WPRKDonation 
The next steps will be to get this link set up on the website in a way that is clearly visible and available. I am a little worried, because I had hoped we would be able to put the link on wprkdj.org and the rollins.edu/wprk sites, but apparently we have no access to edit those sites. So, our only options will be to put the link on the wordpress site, as well as possible create a helpwprk.org site that takes the donor directly to this link. I am also a little disappointed that Charlotte Davis, our new donor relations coordinator, has basically come into some hard times (I believe) and not been able to do anything after the first meeting we had with Leslie to figure out the donation aspect of the 60th anniversary.
On the sponsorship side of things, I talked to Craig Lynch from NYPD Pizza in College Park, and he is set up to give us a free pizza lunch on Tuesday of the telethon. He is also interested in doing underwriting in the future. Another company of his, Adias Oils, may also do some underwriting as well. 
Going forward, the E-Commerce site for vendors to pay the vending fee to is still being set up. Since this money is going directly into our budget, we are solving the taxation problem by counting the vendors and sending that number to Teresia Williams at bursar, so that she can take the correct amount out after the concert to cover taxes. I also need to set up a business department meeting, because I feel that I have lost track of my department a little. They are all very busy and it has been difficult to get everyone together. Finally, I am just happy we are back on air after that break! I'm also very excited about the 60th Anniversary Event moving forward.

Facebook CMR Reading

This reading was difficult to do, because every other paragraph it made me think of something I wanted to do on Facebook.
From a networking standpoint, I have always like Facebook because it is in many cases literally a book of faces. For groups, organizations and networks getting to know each other, not only can you speak at a "virtual water cooler" but also "begin putting faces with names" (Neville 12-13). Unlike sites such as Myspace and blogs like Tumblr and Blogspot, Facebook users often put up actual photos of themselves. This makes the transition between virtual and reality much easier.
"Cases of financial censorship have also been well documented, especially when student government officials are given control over student media budgets" (Filak and Reinardy 16). Although in my experience WPRK has never been censored via our budget, I do feel that the lack of connection we as a Director Staff have with our own budget has and continues to be a problem. While as Business Director of going on 3 years, I have figured out many of the processes such as check request, cash transmittal, and petty cash request. The disconnect between our Rollins leadership (OSIL) and us at Director Staff has been apparent for many years, and I feel that if this is not fixed, WPRK may face things like censorship simply because of the disconnect between student staff and OSIL.

End of February - Spring Break

I have accomplished many things in the week before as well as the week of Spring Break. While working with Haley Bowen to contact our designated district about the 60th Anniversary Event, I have also been talking to Leslie, Mandy, and Lillie about how to use our funds for the concert.
After our 60th Anniversary meeting at Shipyard, I felt that everyone was able to focus on their tasks before the event, as well as have a better understand of what they are going to do during the event. I held many meetings with Rob to discuss small details, and see what other tasks we can delegate.
Along with the fund-a-thon, DJ Mo offered to host a Club WPRK night on the Thursday of the fundraiser week at the Peacock Room. I am planning on collecting donations at the club, fish-bowl style, and possibly having our e-Commerce account option available.
Our E-Commerce account is up as a two test pages: one for donations and one for purchases. Currently the pages look like:
https://bannerweb.rollins.edu/pprd/owa/pkg_ecomm.p_basic_send?orderType=WPRKDonation
https://bannerweb.rollins.edu/pprd/owa/pkg_ecomm.p_basic_send?orderType=WPRK
I am very excited about these pages and how helpful they are going to be going forward towards the event. 
On Friday of Spring Break, I met with Leslie and Lillie to discuss how we will use our budget for the event. All donations will be put into our Gift Fund, and all monies given to us from vendors, sold merchandise, and raffle money will be put into our Rollins Budget Fund. I learned how to do a cash transmittal and a check request to pay contractors from our budget. [Side note: Sara was very absent from this whole process.] Overall, I feel like a lot of things have been accomplished, and even if this event is not perfect, we have a lot of relationships and options regarding our Gift fund and budget going forward at WPRK.

More Meetings

I have created a Sunday Brunch meeting at Shipyard for members of staff that are committed to planning for the 60^th Anniversary Event. Because our Director Staff meetings on Tuesday are geared towards department updates, and many of my own department members are busy during the week, I thought it would be a good idea to have a fun meeting, even though it's on a not-so-fun day to meet. This will also make it easier for us to create a relationship with Shipyard, and hopefully make it easier to convince them to give us free kegs for the 60^th Anniversary. 

Also coming up I have the meeting with Mandy Booker [scheduled for next Wednesday, 2/29] to talk about our E-Commerce Account. 

I am also planning to meet with again with Leslie Fair to learn how we can use our gift account to fund the concert, and understand where exactly donations during the event will go. Hopefully this will occur within the next two weeks.

          

You're Fired!

          This reading definitely resonated with me as a member of WPRK for three years. Our director staff and our DJ staff are both made up of volunteers, however, we still have the problem of "firing" or letting go of the volunteers who do not do their jobs, or are hard to communicate with. Especially in regard to DJs, who sometimes feel that they have more of a right to have a volunteer position than Director Staff.
          While I do not have as much experience with hiring and firing DJs, I was part of an effort to "fire" a DJ that posted our WPRK logo on a Rachel's (strip club) flyer, and put these flyers down in our station. From the reading, I believe this would fall under "poor work ethics." The DJ, however, appealed to OSIL, saying that there is nothing in the constitution that says he cannot do this. The DJ was reinstated by OSIL, and Clark, Rob, Casey and I set up a meeting with Sara about how this hurts our power as Director Staff. It was definitely an important experience, where I felt that WPRK Director Staff was able to confront OSIL about how this type of conflict weakens our ability to direct the DJ staff.
          In terms of firing Director Staff, this has also often posed a problem (past and present). Because students are not paid, there is little incentive on our part to "fire" a student (because this student will have to be replace) unless you are a in a director position that needs this student to be doing there job in order to completely do your job. I feel that the new departmentalized staff does make it easier to let go off and re-hire staff; however, I think we still could use more guidelines about this - especially because now that we are in departments not all positions have met the other positions.
        The author also mentions having DJs take a test on FCC guidelines and other rules; I feel that this would be extremely helpful, and we have talked about doing it before... We just need someone dedicated enough, and with enough balls (excuse my language) to re-test all the DJs we have already hired. I also liked the idea of evaluating student staff member, however, I feel like this would be more viable for us if these positions were paid, instead of volunteer positions. WPRK also needs to work on our communication to students when we feel that they are not sufficiently doing their jobs. Unfortunately, we tend to fall back onto gossip and back-talking about how these people are not responding or doing anything, instead of confronting these students.

Biz Recruitment: Continued

            As the business recruitment of alumni, donors and sponsors continues, the WPRK business department merged with our Promotion department to generate hype about the event. Our Promotions Director, Rob, broke down the Greater Orlando area into districts, and a two-person combo team of business department and promotions department are now able to help each other out in their different areas. The districts include the Milk, Garden, Fairbanks, Mills 50, College Park, Downtown and the Attractions.

            In the WPRK promotions meeting on Thursday, I attended the meeting to link everyone in the promotions up with their corresponding business partner. We discussed and brainstormed some methods of reaching our to sponsors and vendors. On Friday, I met with Kayla and we also talked about the best way to reach out to sponsors. We decided to come up with a list of possible sponsors and get their contact information on Park Ave. The Park Ave and Fairbanks District is going to be utilized by Kayla, Lauren, and Dara, but I wanted to help Kayla get a feel for what to say to potential sponsors. It was a great trip, and we reached out to a lot of businesses on Park Ave:

            On Saturday, I held my Biz Staff meeting with Rob and Justin (only they could make it) and we discussed the concert more in depth. We talked about the layout, how to work with vendors, and decided to focus on the raffle as a great tool to gain donations. Businesses so far (as I learned from talking to those on Park Ave.) are very interested in giving us a gift card or other trade, rather than donating for on–air promotion. By utilizing these gifts and gift cards, we can really hype up the raffle and create a huge incentive for people to donate to get raffle ticket(s). 

           This is the progress we have made so far on recruiting alumni and sponsorship donations and trades. There is still a lot to do going forward, but I feel like the Business department is on the right track and heading in a good direction.

February 13 and Beyond

For the past few weeks, I have met with Leslie Fair from the donations offices, and plan to meet with Mandy Booker in Bursar. After meeting with Leslie, our WPRK donor relations coordinator has kept in touch with Leslie and is working on a list of WPRK alumni to contact for donations.
After talking with Mandy Booker, I am working on creating an E-Commerce account for WPRK so that we can sell items and use that money for our budget. This is especially important because of the concert coming up; this is a great opportunity to sell event t-shirts and posters. After I can get some forms signed, Justin (our Business Director), Sara from OSIL and I will meet with Mandy to get the details about how we can use this E-Commerce account to make money for the station.
Finally, my Business team and I are putting together a list of sponsors we plan on contacting, and compiling their names, phone numbers, and emails. This is going to be organized through gmail (Ted, I shared with you our sponsor list) so that there are no overlaps of people contacting the same sponsors. This shared list also allows WPRK staff outside of the business department to add local business relationships that they may have.
Our next, SPECIFIC goal going forward is to have all of our food-trade sponsors locked in for the Fund-a-thon. This means 15 food sponsors, three meals per day during the event, all food traded for advertising during the event.

CMR Reading

Two things stuck out to me while reading the article in Campus Media Review, which focused more on the campus newspaper side than other forms of campus media.
The first was the importance of the connections to people in the organization; good connections also make recruiting much easier. For WPRK, however, I feel this is something we need to work on. We have a couple of people who leave our director staff bitter that they did not get the position they wanted, or felt that others ganged up on them or were simply rude. We have a lot of drama at the station, and I feel that this limits our potential to connect well to other students and teachers around campus.
The second is our space. The director staff office we have at WPRK really represents our alternative nature as a station, and draws in people, especially those who are interested in music. Our CD library always impresses guests. I feel that the more we can get people down to the station, the more people are going to be interested in staying with the station and getting involved.

Campus Media Engagement

My main goal going forward this semester is to get as many donations, sponsors, underwriters, and promotional items for the 60th anniversary concert. With a business department, I am excited to be able to delegate tasks and contact a huge audience, including alumni, local businesses, and even large companies with an interest in college radio.
Donations are going to be a huge aspect of this event. We are going to be accepting donations by phone, online, and in person. This is going to require a lot of meeting with Bursar and OSIL, as well as organization of donators and adequate thank-you letters or promo items.
Promotional items are also going to be a key part of both the Fund-a-thon and the concert. I am planning on getting creative with our promotional materials, from flyers, guitar picks, stickers, t-shirts, ect. Some, such as t-shirts, can be sold to raise money, while smaller items like guitar picks can be given out in order to promote our name and FM dial to concert-goers who may not be avid listeners, especially students. Sponsors are also going to be a key factor in a successful event. Local restaurants and caterers are going to be necessary to have free food all throughout the Fund-a-thon. Sponsors can also be offered prime time spots during the actual concert, which will be broadcasted on air. Local businesses will be very interested in reaching the large number of people that the concert will attract, and it will be important to sustain these connections for continued underwriters after the concert.
I am very excited about the up-coming concert. I feel that it is a great way to incorporate all of these new ideas and positions WPRK has available.