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On Wednesday afternoon Chris Burris, Elise Anderson and I worked the phones at the WFDD pledge drive. We took contributor’s pledges and provided them with information about the thank-you gifts that are available at various donation levels. During our 2.5 hours at the studio, we collected $7,394 in pledges for our NPR station.

Why so much? I think three factors motivated listeners to call: we were there during the evening rush hour which is a heavy-listening time; there was a contribution match in place, so each donor’s pledge was doubled; and, there were some awesome thank-you gifts available including five ZSR library cards. For a donation of $200 to WFDD, a listener could receive one of our library cards and in fact, one donor claimed a card while we were on the phones. The other sought-after premium was the Terry Gross ticket package for the Fresh Air hostess’ visit to Greensboro next month.

We enjoyed chatting with our WFDD supervisors and had a chance to chat briefly with Denise Franklin, Molly Davis and other WFDD folks. As always, they fed us well – pizzas from Mellow Mushroom. Working the phones during the pledge drive was a fun experience and it felt good to support WFDD.