Listener Support & the Public Radio Player

In a previous blog post, we talked about how the introduction of ads to the Public Radio Player can help fund app maintenance and development well beyond the current CPB grant. But we aren’t stopping there – it’s time to channel the goodwill of the app’s vast audience to the stations themselves. Clearly, there would be no Player without them.

The big hurdle is that Apple currently prohibits donations to be made using the iTunes payment system. We have been discussing a wide range of alternatives, and in evaluating our options we’ve outlined some guiding principles:

• Donations should be easy to make from a smartphone.
• Keep service fees low. Credit card processing or other payment services should not exceed 5% of revenue from donations.
• Donations made from the Public Radio Player should not be disruptive to stations’ existing membership programs.
• Transactions should be directly between the listener and the station. PRX should not have to serve as a middleman and distribute donation dollars to stations.

Most stations accept online donations on their websites, and we could simply link to these secure pledge pages from within the Player. But these donation forms require the entry of personal and credit card information over multiple fields and pages. This is cumbersome on a small touch-screen device — even the well-intentioned among you might not find the patience for this.

We quickly eliminated the possibility of charging for the app. Public radio has traditionally been free to access and we want to keep it that way on the Player. Plus, Apple takes 30% of all app sales, which is an excessive rate for non-profit fundraising efforts.

We took a good look at the possibility of SMS giving. The amazing sums of money raised for earthquake relief efforts in Haiti thrust mobile giving into the spotlight. But there are downsides: donations are capped at $10 by phone carriers (the average pledge drive donation to public radio is around $90). It would be difficult to create direct transactions between donors and stations within the current SMS giving infrastructure. Aside from the occasional big success, many organizations who have tried SMS giving have not yet found it to be worth the expense and effort.

More promising is to integrate an existing online payment system. Popular services like Paypal, Google Checkout and Amazon Payments are all developing mobile payment platforms that could be used to process donations. Assuming you (and your station) have an account with one of these services, you could donate by simply entering your username and password. And if each station has their own receiving account, the donation would be a direct transaction from listener to station. These mobile payment services are still evolving and we plan to keep a close eye on them for future releases.

In consultation with our Station Advisory Group, we’ve found that the most effective solution for now is one of the simplest: provide links within the app to contact a station by email or voice call to initiate the pledge process. The transaction can take place either over the phone or online at a later time. This approach demands the least amount of adjustment to how contributions are received at stations. PRX will soon release a tool for stations to provide the appropriate phone numbers and email addresses.

We’d like to hear from you. What kind of public radio donation system would you feel comfortable with on the Public Radio Player? Let us know in the comments.