February 23, 2012

Dear supporters and friends of WDFH,

As you probably know, WDFH has been fighting an uphill financial battle for its entire life.  Now, after years of very difficult financial circumstances, we are having to make significant cutbacks, and the end of the road may be very near.

Even though we are completely nonprofit, we have the usual expenses that any business has — rent, utilities, insurance, phone and internet service, payroll, and so on.

Unfortunately, our financial revenues are not meeting expenses, important budget items are simply not being funded, and WDFH's future is in immediate jeopardy.  I am writing today to let you know about this situation before you hear about it in any possible press coverage.  (See our press release.)

It is not too late to turn things around, but any turnaround would have to happen quickly, as the clock is officially ticking.  I'll talk about that later in this letter.

WDFH has had a history going back to the early 1970s.  As you may know, we completed a major expansion of our broadcast signal in 2009.  Also in 2009, we re-established our webcast, and in late 2010, with the help of an anonymous but extremely generous donor, we we able to re-establish our live studio.

So for the first time ever, we now have all of the necessary pieces of the puzzle in place.  The stage is set for a vibrant new era of public radio service to our lower Hudson valley communities.

But WDFH is, right now, functionally a startup.  We're facing the challenge of having to build a following essentially from scratch.  That's something that takes years to accomplish, especially in these difficult economic times.

The 2009 signal expansion, necessary though it was, consumed most of our cash reserve, and we've been living hand to mouth ever since.  We've been working very hard not only to bring you an expanding range of high-quality local programs but also to reach out into the community to find additional support.

But as I mentioned, that support isn't developing fast enough.  We've also applied for foundation grants, but many foundations are scaling back their giving, in many cases accepting applications only from organizations they've already funded.

This strange juxtaposition — launching a new beginning at the same time that we're running out of money — has made the past 20 months both vibrant and eerie.  We've brought in new volunteers and created new shows:

• Eyes on Westchester is an expansion of our in-depth local news coverage into north central Westchester.

• We've continued to bring you performances from the music scene here in the lower Hudson valley, including two next week (Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at 9:00).

• A new program is in the works to spotlight the important work being done by nonprofit organizations in our area.

• And just in October, we debuted OutCasting, a vibrant new public radio show we've created to give voice to issues facing LGBTQ youth.  We believe that OutCasting is the only program of its kind in public radio in the United States.  It landed us on the front page of The Journal News.

To see what's been going on, have a look at the first (and hopefully not last) edition of our newsletter.

At the same time, we've been working under the burden of a constant financial emergency.  That has seriously dampened morale and made it impossible to begin to carry out any kind of long-range goals.

WDFH is a unique local resource: a public radio station, operated by community volunteers, that is specifically for us here in the lower Hudson Valley.  WDFH doesn't have its head or its heart in New York City — it's right here.  People all over the country are struggling to get what we already have: a legitimate, fully-licensed public radio station on the FM dial.

But we are an independent, freestanding radio station, not part of a college or other larger organization.  That means that we have no parent organization that can provide financial help or even a buffer against hard times.

Without significant additional financial support, WDFH will soon have to shut down completely.  Our irreplaceable broadcast license will be turned over to a public or religious broadcaster that will almost certainly eliminate all possibility of local programming.

If we can't prevent this, it will be the death of a local public radio station here in the lower Hudson valley, and the end of all of the possibilities and potential that a local public radio station can provide to our underserved area in the future.

It is a very difficult time for us.  I have personally spent my entire professional life, starting in 1973, to establish WDFH.  It has been like pushing a boulder up a mountain, starting with the fact that it took 20 years to get the FCC to approve WDFH.  As I said, it's really just in the past year that we have had all of the elements in place — studio, viable signal, webcast — to start building a public following.  And our following is starting to grow.  But cash income is increasing much more slowly than our remaining cash is being spent, even with operating expenses cut to the bone.

Last weekend, I did one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do:  I signed the contract engaging a broadcast station broker to begin the process of selling our irreplaceable broadcast license.  This was a heartbreaking step, as you might imagine, but our financial position requires that we at least start this process.

The sale process is not irreversible — not yet.  In fact, right now it's completely reversible.  Tax-deductible donations could stop the process in its tracks.

To stop the sale process, we would need an infusion of cash starting within the next few weeks — firm pledges of $10,000 per month to keep the station going for the next year.

An annual budget of $120,000 is tiny compared to the budgets of larger public radio stations.  In fact, the annual compensation of just one executive at another public radio station in our area would run WDFH for more than four years.

If you care about keeping a local public radio station serving our needs right here in Westchester and Rockland, we urgently need your involvement.  We are in immediate danger of losing WDFH forever — just when so many other things are going exactly right.

So if you value what it means to have a vibrant public radio voice right here, not a station in the city but right here in our own communities, now is the time to step up to the plate.

• We need your tax-deductible contributions.

• We need you to tell your friends, acquaintances, contacts, and social networking followers about WDFH and urge them to support us as well.

• We need you to help us find philanthropists who can give large donations.

• We need you to help us build an active and successful funding committee focused both on solving both our immediate financial emergency and, once the emergency is solved, on developing and carrying out longer-range funding plans.

• And we need to know that you care about keeping your local public radio station local.  We need to know that you won't stand by and let it get swallowed up by the forces of corporate media consolidation that have eliminated local voices all over the country.

We can reach our $120,000 annual goal in several ways:

• The most secure, in the short term, would be a small number of philanthropists making very large donations to keep us going for three years so that we can start to build a more diversified funding base.

• But sixty people donating $2000 a year would do the trick.

• And a thousand people donating $120 a year — just $10 a month — would also get us there.

We don't have access to these one or two or three philanthropists, or the sixty, or the thousand.  But we hope you can help us reach these people.

Please visit us at wdfh.org.  You can donate online or by check.  (For large donations, we prefer a check because both Network for Good and Paypal take a percentage.)

If you know people who have the ability to make large donations, please tell them now about WDFH and how important it is not to lose this precious local resource.

To those who have made recent donations even with the knowledge about our difficult financial situation, we humbly offer you our most heartfelt thanks.

And to all of you, however things turn out, thank you for your support.

warmest regards,

Marc