The annual cost of broadcasting and publishing KPCW news and programming is $2.3 million dollars. As a nonprofit organization, the station relies heavily on donor support throughout the year, with donations from Broadcasters Club members (KPCW’s major giving program) and individual donors during pledge drives and year-end giving making up roughly 50% of the station’s operating budget.
KPCW President and General Manager Renai Bodley Miller said the majority of the station’s budget goes to staff salaries, including the 3-person programming team and 7-person news team who produce dozens of local news stories each week about issues impacting residents of the Wasatch Back.
“KPCW is a small, rural public radio station,” said Bodley Miller. “We only cover Summit and Wasatch counties. There are 80,000 people approximately in those counties combined, and if half of those people gave us just $5 a month, that would cover our operating budget.”
Donor support makes it possible for KPCW to provide daily radio programming and publish all its content online without a paywall. In an effort to expand free access and reach audiences in new ways, KPCW introduced “The Local,” a free weekday newsletter, in 2022 – and strong donor support this past year meant the station could further expand its services.
“Just two weeks ago, we launched a Sunday version of ‘The Local,’ that features all of the top stories of the week, and also looks at what’s going to happen in the week ahead.”
While this newsletter is free to all 6,000 subscribers, it costs the station staff time and resources, during the workweek and now on weekends, to produce it.
Along with support from individual donors, contributions from local underwriters (the public radio term for “advertisers”) make up a significant percentage of KPCW’s operating budget.
“We get money from our underwriters,” Bodley-Miller said. “So if you hear a business on air saying they support public radio, next time you’re at that business, please thank them for being a supporter of community news and information.”
The final portion of the budget for public radio stations like KPCW is grant funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or CPB.
“All public radio stations know two years in advance what they’re going to get from Congress,” said Bodley-Miller. “That’s really important when you’re trying to manage the budget for a nonprofit organization.”
CPB funding is subject to Congressional approval each year and this year multiple attempts were made by House Republicans to eliminate funding for public radio. The federal government is currently operating under temporary spending measures because Congress failed to pass FY2024 appropriations bills, which means that efforts to defund NPR and CPB could resurface early in the new year.
“These continuing funding resolutions are going to expire in the next month or two,” Bodley-Miller said. “There’s a deadline in January and another one in February, so it’s possible this whole debate is going to emerge again.”
With fiscal uncertainty heading into 2024, year-end giving from donors to KPCW takes on even more importance. The station is currently eligible for matching grant funding from the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) for all new recurring monthly contributions that are set up before December 31, 2023. Donors who are interested in helping the station receive this match can set up a new recurring donation by visiting KPCW.org/donate and click “make it monthly.”
