What’s the horsepower on your development engine?
If your radio station is on the air, you probably think you have everything in place to keep it going. You have a studio, a board, some playback equipment, a transmitter, a tower and lots and lots of wires to connect everything together.
But you could be missing a key ingredient that will keep your station on the air long after you’ve had to replace all of the gadgets and gear necessary for broadcasting.
You must have a development engine. What we’re talking about here is more than a strategy or an idea. It is a series of systems and functions all working synergistically to grow vital relationships with donors in order to inspire them, inform them, ask them, thank them and remind them about your station.
Like the engine in your car, which produces the power to the wheels for movement, your development engine produces forward motion for your radio station. It is constantly helping you advance key relationships from just names you’ve gathered to people who are giving regularly. Some of those will be capable of giving significantly more than others and some may even rise to the level of becoming champions for your station. In development, this kind of relationship advancement activity is called “moves management,” but we’ll talk more about that later.