General Manager Report October 2013 from Randy Peterson
October is always a great month as we move from the end of the fall membership drive in to a very active event season. Our October calendar had us at Tucson Meet Yourself, the Blues Festival, and the Fine Arts and Jazz Festival, among others.
30th Anniversary plans are being finalized, with many KXCI Presents and fundraising concerts, community events and open houses. We will celebrate for thirty days between November 22nd through December 21st.
We will be introducing SCRUM Agile Project Management in November in part to coincide with work on the 30th Anniversary (but employable on all future work). I spent part of the tail end of October learning SCRUM from Tony Ford; he will join us for the implementation on November 12th.
The entire capital campaign steering committee met October 29th at the Pioneer Building, with very good attendance. While I am not happy with the overall progress of the campaign, we are picking up a little steam now in the public phase of the effort and it is good to have more money coming in than going out.
My particular efforts on the campaign included a handful of one-to-one solicitations and a lot of promotional and marketing work, including finalizing the proofs on the 4,400 piece mailing for mid-month and the printing of the postcard that will be sent as a reminder in mid-November; the creation of the secure commerce area for web pledging at KXCI.org, and several press interviews and purchased ads (Foothills News, Zocalo on trade, etc.).
We’ve had about a dozen board and steering committee members record Amplify testimonials, and I have edited and placed those recordings on the log. They will be a little long for the first week or two (averaging around 2:30) and then reduce to about 1:30, 1:40 for November.
We received word from the Federal Communications Commission that our auxiliary transmitter application was approved on October 24th. I filed the necessary public notice documents and placed the approval notice in the public file. We now have three years to get it done!
I have renewed the second 6-month option on the tower site. In theory we should begin to pay the $1,000 per month rent in May 2014, although I expect the site owner will be flexible on this.
I hosted a site visit from the Alliance Fund of the Community Foundation on October 24th (from a grant I wrote in September). The official announcement will be in November, but the Alliance Fund IS approving our grant for about $800 for support of Stonewall Day broadcasting in June 2014.
I met with the staff of the Downtown Tucson Partnership to formalize our sponsorship of December’s Festival of Lights parade, which will wrap up our 30th anniversary celebration. KXCI deejays will be spinning holiday tunes in Armory Park as part of the pre-parade festivities.
On October 4th I met with Jim and Tom from El Con Club about a fundraising concert in December during our 30th Anniversary.
We launched our first monthly concert at Maker House on October 2nd. It was not a financial success but these things take time; we did have about 65 people in attendance to see Sabra Faulk, Heather Hardy and Hans Hutchison.
I attended a talk on crowdfunding techniques with the CEO of Rocket Hub. There should be opportunities in the near future for us to use crowdfunding on projects like Studio 2A compilations or aspects of the capital campaign.
Downtown Lowdown interviews in October included Mia Hansen for the WAMO Art Walk, Tamara Mack for the Fox Theatre Gala, Elva de la Torre for Tucson Meet Yourself, Shellie Ginn from the Tucson Modern Streetcar, and Jamie Manser for 2nd Saturdays Downtown.
I’m thrilled to be working with Cathy Rivers on the launch of “The Kids Are Alright,” a music show featuring a collective of teen deejays, many of whom have previously taken our kids’ classes. The show will air Thursdays from 10pm to midnight (pre-recorded earlier in the week!), with The Road Show moving to Mondays to replace Starr Tracks.
At the monthly Executive Directors Roundtable (October 25th) the key topic of discussion for all the non-profits was staffing and reorganization.
On October 30th I met with the organizers of the Flagstaff Hullababaloo, who are looking to organize a similar festival here in April 2014.