New Thing #98--Pledge Central

In my opinion, the best radio station in the nation, KDHX, is located in St. Louis. It's a non-commercial, independent, community station staffed by volunteers, and it has an incredible range of music types. The volunteer programmers change every two hours, and each programmer is an expert in the type of music they play. There's no such thing as a suggested playlist at KDHX!

Because the station doesn't run commercials, two times a year they have pledge drives to raise money for the station. One of the best things about this project (and blog) is that I get to do activities I've always wanted to do, but I've never gotten around to. Today I volunteered to work as a pledge drive phone volunteer.

KDHX has been the main station I listen to for many years--it's been on the air 20 years, and I think I've been a member at least 15 of those. The station is located in the Tower Grove East Neighborhood in South St. Louis. I don't know what I was expecting when I turned onto Magnolia Avenue, but the building is tucked into a residential area, and has only a small sign out front. The radio station was on the first floor of the building, and all the phone volunteers were sitting around a large table in the back of the building.

The job was simple--the volunteer coordinator Korinne spent about five minutes talking about the pledge form before we went into "pledge central". When someone called to pledge, our job was to complete the form (with about 10 questions on it), then hand it to the supervisor. At times the phones were very busy, and other times all six phone volunteers were just sitting. We got to listen to the on-air program, Bob's Scratchy Records, while we were working. The time went by quickly. I met some great people, and got to put faces to a couple of the voices I hear on the radio.

I don't know what took me so long to volunteer; I don't think this will be my last time!