From Member to Major Donor: Placing Trust in Public Broadcasting

Like many others who value not having to turn to the commercial air waves for their information and entertainment,

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Sara Little Turnbull has been a donor to public broadcasting throughout her adult life.

Whether struggling to make ends meet while helping family members through catastrophic illnesses, or enjoying the wealth she amassed through her various careers as magazine editor, product designer, and scholar, the 83-year-old Ms. Turnbull had often mailed a check for $30 or $40 to the public-broadcasting station that served the area where she lived. The donation usually earned her a basic membership, which entitled her to small perks, such as a monthly newsletter.

Then in late 1997, while thinking about her estate, she realized how important public radio and television were to her and decided she wanted to do more to insure the future of commercial-free broadcasting. “When the time came and I thought I would have to stand up and be counted, I decided it was enormously important for me to contribute, particularly now that I have a certain amount to give back,” she says.

So Ms. Turnbull, who directs a research center at Stanford University that studies the influence of commerce and culture on society, called KQED (No. 314 on the Philanthropy 400 list), the public radio and television station in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she had lived for the previous 12 years. After talking to a fund raiser there, she decided in 1998 to create a charitable trust that will provide approximately $1-million to KQED’s endowment fund.

What’s more, Ms. Turnbull chose to allow KQED to use the income from her planned gift — once it is placed in the station’s endowment — as a challenge grant during on-air pledge drives to raise even more money for the station. And earlier this year, she increased the amount of her annual contribution — to several thousand dollars.

“KQED has been in my life for a long time, and for a long time I was part of that group that takes for granted that KQED will always exist,” Ms. Turnbull says. “As the media in general get to be influenced by increasing commercial content, I want to protect KQED. I want to do everything in my power to have KQED be functional. I consider this remarkably important.”

KQED and other public-broadcasting stations across the country, which traditionally have relied on on-air pledge drives to raise money, are working hard to attract more major donors like Ms. Turnbull. But such donors still represent only a small percentage of most stations’ annual budgets. At KQED, for example, only 4 per cent of the station’s 1998 budget of $36-million came from people who gave at least $1,000.

“Public broadcasting is new to the major-donor arena,” says Davida Hartman-Griffin, vice-president for development at KQED. “Universities and hospitals have been doing this for a long time, but public broadcasting is stepping into that arena.”

Ms. Hartman-Griffin says Ms. Turnbull is like many major donors to KQED.

“It is not uncommon for major donors to start out as basic members,” Ms. Hartman-Griffin says. “We’ve heard about planned gifts and people who have written us into their will who were only basic members. These are people who have been thinking about KQED for a long time.”

Public-broadcasting stations need those big gifts more than ever. They are facing a 2003 deadline — imposed by Congress — to convert to digital technology. And since Congress did not set aside federal funds for the conversion, the stations must raise the money on their own.

At KQED, the equipment needed for the conversion, just by itself, will cost $23-million.

The station, like other public-broadcasting organizations, has begun a capital campaign to raise the funds. It also hopes to raise an additional $25-million for program expenses that it expects to face with the conversion.

Public-broadcasting stations have also been threatened in recent years with cuts in federal funds, although the amount they collectively received has remained constant at $250-million over the last two years.

Still, many public-broadcasting organizations have sought new sources of support to minimize their reliance on the government. Some of that support has come in the form of corporate underwriting and sponsorships.

Some observers say on-air messages that acknowledge support from corporate underwriters come close to advertisements, especially in recent years as the Federal Communications Commission loosened restrictions governing such messages in an effort to encourage more corporate support of public programming.

What’s more, critics say that some public-broadcasting stations are increasingly reluctant to air controversial material for fear of offending audiences and driving away corporate sponsors.

It’s a concern that Ms. Turnbull shares. “As public broadcasting inches toward commercialism, they lose my type,” she says. “That’s something that should be of serious concern to KQED.”

Thus far, however, it has not seemed to hurt fund raising at many public-broadcasting stations. While the eight public-broadcasting organizations on the Philanthropy 400 list saw their total private support decline by 1.4 per cent in 1998, the decrease was due in part to a change in accounting and reporting practices at one large station. Contributions to KQED were up by 11.1 per cent. More than half — 54 per cent — of the $29.9-million that the station raised came from individuals, while 22 per cent came from corporate and foundation grants.

For her part, Ms. Turnbull says that KQED “is fighting a very valiant battle” to keep commercialism at bay, which is why she has continued to support it with her hard-earned money.

“I didn’t have a rich father or a rich uncle,” she says. “This is elbow-grease money, and I care a lot about that.”

The station’s staff members, she says, aren’t people with commercial interests but are people who truly care about the integrity of the organization, its programs, and its donors.

“KQED is made up of givers,” she says. “You go through the organization and they’re all people who care a great deal about quality and care about what they’re doing. And if they were only interested in commercial rewards, they’d be in commercial broadcasting.”

Indeed, the qualities she has found at the station, she says, reflect the qualities that her own parents instilled in her as a child growing up in New York.

Ms. Turnbull’s father, a day laborer who never made more than a modest income, “was a man of ethics, integrity, and dedication,” she says. Her mother, who came from a family of Hebrew scholars, passed on an intellectual curiosity that has never waned.

Ms. Turnbull says she has gotten to know many staff members and managers at KQED, including its president, Mary Bitterman, through the efforts of the planned-giving department, which has invited her to numerous receptions. KQED has even tapped Ms. Turnbull’s intellectual wealth, inviting her to appear on a local television program featuring remarkable women, where she talked about her jobs as a developer of Corningware, an art director at an advertising agency, an editor at House Beautiful magazine, and a scholar at Stanford.

Ms. Turnbull says she also appreciates the station’s efforts to broaden its coverage of the region’s increasingly diverse population and its ties to Pacific Rim countries. “I represent an intelligent audience that wants to learn and grow, not just be entertained,” she says. “I consider KQED a very important part of my continuing education.”