The Downside of being funded by State Government

By Stuart Holland, Manager, Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network

(The first part of this was written on July 1, 2011; the post-script was written August 1, 2011.)

In the last few years, there have been a number of services that have folded because their funding was removed. Some of those were run by public radio stations, but a number of them had funding through their state departments of education. Legislators and governors made budget decisions that precluded funding radio information services. And through these losses, people pointed at Minnesota and said, "They get their funding through their agency for the blind, so they'll be safe."

Not so.

What is now known as the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network began life on January 2, 1969 as the Radio Talking Book. It was part of a public/private partnership, the Hamm Family Recording Project for the Blind. The money came from the Hamm family (founders of Hamm Beer) and they were housed with the State Services for the Blind. That relationship of funding continued into the 1980s when it was decided that having governmental funding would be more secure. The Hamm family continued to contribute money, but they channeled it through the Hamm Family Fund of the Saint Paul Foundation. That continues to this day. The money is used for purchases of new equipment, for ongoing education and for recognition of volunteers.

The Minnesota State Services for the Blind, like all state agencies for the blind, receives a mix of state and federal funding. All of the employment counselors who work with the blind receive a mix of state and federal funding but none of the services offered by our Communication Center (formerly the Hamm Family Recording Project for the Blind) get any federal funds. We do have a Development Director who goes out into the community to raise money. The Communication Center provides Braille services (mostly for K-12), provides audio textbooks for college students and is the home of the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network. Though the Radio reaches the widest audience and has the largest clientele, it receives the least funding. As readers of this know, radio is a fairly inexpensive medium.

What happened recently in Minnesota is being played out across the country. Social services have become a political beach ball being tossed about by legislators and governors trying to solve their fiscal crises. In Minnesota, both the Senate and House have Republican majorities, many newly-elected, who took pledges not to raise taxes. The governor is a liberal Democrat. As the legislature tries to balance the budget, they see only the possibility of cutting social services (education, healthcare, etc.) and the governor is holding a hard line against these cuts. He wishes to raise taxes, true, but the taxes he is speaking of are those on the people making $1 million and more per year who are paying less in tax than the middle class. The millionaires' taxes were reduced by the last governor, thinking that it would increase job growth. That didn't happen. So now we have a government that has shut down all but essential services while the two sides try to figure out how they can agree with this impasse.

The Minnesota Radio Talking Book went off the air at Midnight on June 30. The State Services for the Blind was not considered an essential service. Hopefully, by the time you read this article, the budget crisis will be resolved and we will have a state budget. In the meantime, students will not be getting Braille textbooks, college students will be behind in their reading and blind and visually-impaired people will be relegated to the ranks of the uninformed. No books, no magazines, no daily newspapers. I wish it were otherwise.

Post-script:

The Minnesota State Government (including the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network) was shut down for 20 days. This was the first time that the Radio Talking Book Network was off the air in 41 years, and during this time, the thousands of users had to find other sources for their newspapers, magazines and books. We are grateful to the Kansas-Audio Reader Network, which gave us permission to use their signal when we first came back on the air. When we came back, we had no programming ready to air, few volunteers coming in, and very little for the volunteers to record since all the mail had been held for three weeks. So, for about twenty-four hours, Minnesotans were confused by the Kansas City obituaries and the Kansas Farm Report. But our thought was that another reading service was preferable to listening to the regular public radio station.

Our thanks to all the users of our signal who found ways to cope without us.

What is YOUR future?

by David Noble, Development Director, Sun Sounds of Arizona

I caught myself contemplating the recent spate of reading service closings.  My heart goes out to our most recent losses; WHIL and Brad, as well as Stan in Florida.  More so, I feel for the people of those communities who no longer have access to the information they deserve. At first I blamed the communities which would not support the service; but after more reflection I thought, "These events were foreseeable," and, "What can I learn from this?"  What follows are my musings.
 

There are several common themes in nearly every closing of an existing service.  Regardless of the number of years in existence, those services which closed lacked important abilities.  In no particular order they were:

- the ability to control revenue

- the ability to control staffing levels

- the ability to influence succession in leadership

- the ability to change services provided

- the ability to recruit volunteer talent for daily operations, board-level and growth activities

I started then to think about my service and other services I've become acquainted with over the past 26 years.  How much control do I have in these areas? Do I have a weakness in the future health of Sun Sounds? Do others have danger zones too? I decided that, for the moment, Sun Sounds wasn't at risk for these basic needs of a service - even though we do have restrictions on how quickly we can act as part of a large, bureaucratic college organization.  So how do my friends in the industry fare?

Certainly the inability to acquire funds is a huge problem - and I do not mean the difficulty raising money we all have that to some degree.  I mean lacking permission from a parent organization to go get your own funds or worse - having no plans or interest in finding funding beyond what you have now.  Another huge risk is the inability to determine how those funds are used.  This impacts everything. Keeping a service "in thrall" to the parent in revenue, staffing, volunteerism and service provision are all hallmarks of a service that is ripe for disintegration.

Impairments or a total lack of self governance is another commonality for nearly all the closed services.  Choosing what type of service will be provided should be the purview of those who know the audience and the audience themselves.  Not having this control leads to becoming under utilized and being called irrelevant by detractors... which leads to a closure.  Choosing delivery means is wrapped up in this too.  Radio, TV, Internet, telephone or podcasting are all options for the modern reading service.  Services which closed often had little to no ability to offer expanded services.

Being unable to participate in the selection of leaders is a more hidden loss of control because we often expect that "the people upstairs" will choose who runs the reading service.  One solution to this is on the desks of the executive directors of services who read this today... check out your job description and see if itsecures the reading service's future when someone other than you is in charge.  If not, begin the steps needed and possible within your system to alter the duties and responsibilities so that the next person hired has a clear mandate to secure the health of the organization you've shepherded for so long. 

Dedicated volunteers make our services run.  Inspired volunteers make for good board members.  Good board members have contacts and influence in the community.  If the service was prevented, restricted or discouraged from recruiting talented volunteers, then its health and growth are stunted.  It loses an important voice in the community outside of the service recipients - who seldom speak out when their reading services disappear - as we know from history.

So what's to be done? If these areas of concern exist where you live, what can be done about it?  The situation didn't get that way in a day, so the solution likely won't come about in a single meeting or even several.  It would take a long time to change a system that built those weaknesses into place.  Patience, diplomacy, persistence and passion will be required.  Yes, that's a lot of work but the rewards are a better informed and active, independent print-disabled population.

I'll leave my soapbox today with this Chinese proverb: "When planning for a year, plant corn. When planning for a decade, plant trees. When planning for life, train and educate people." 

Outsource volunteer management

by Heidi Capriotti, Marketing Coordinator, Sun Sounds of Arizona 

Bet that title got your attention!

Yes, the Tucson affiliate of Sun Sounds of Arizona does outsource its Volunteer management, but not in a Slumdog Millionaire kind of way.

Last August Molly Stockton, the Volunteer Coordinator in Tucson, recently relocated from Tucson to her homeland of Southampton, England. Not wanting to lose her connection to Sun Sounds, Molly offered to continue to manage the logistics of volunteer scheduling via e-mail.

"No one thought that, from 7,000 or so miles away, it would work," said Molly. But it has. 

Molly maintains close communication with volunteers and staff in Tucson and by all reports there has not been a single scheduling mishap since the experiment began. Doug Martz, Tucson's Operations Director interviews and auditions prospective volunteers, then e-mails all the details to Molly.

This is a rare and unusual arrangement, but those who know Molly would agree that she is a rare and unusual person. There is no way the Tucson affiliate would operate as effectively without Molly's efforts. Even though Molly is not in Tucson anymore, volunteers enjoy working with her via e-mail, and miss her presence in the office.

 

2012 noisy IAAIS members set to invade Houston May 16-20

by David Gillmore, Sight into Sound

Houston's five million friendly people are pleased to invite the IAAIS for a visit next May, and host organization Taping for the Blind is already busily developing the conference agenda. Right now is the time to offer your suggestions for program topics, speakers you'd like to hear, and events you might like to experience during your stay in America's fourth largest city.

You can expect nice weather--average mid-May temperature historically range from lows of 69 to highs of 86, so you probably won't even need a jacket.

Houston's easy to get to-its central location keeps flying time short and fares low. All major U.S. carriers serve Houston, including three low-cost carriers (Southwest; AirTran; Jet Blue), so air fares won't break your travel budget.

The conference hotel is the Westin Galleria, located smack in the middle of America's 4th largest shopping/restaurant complex with over 375 stores and restaurants set beneath spectacular glass atriums (www.westin.com/HoustonGalleria). IAAIS delegates will find great variety and pricing among the numerous restaurants, ranging from walk-up counters to fine dining, many with views of the Olympic-sized indoor ice rink (skate rental available).

The Westin, where all our meetings will be held, was completely renovated in 2010. Did we mention that covered parking is free?

So we'll see you in Houston next May. We can't wait to get you some Texas barbecue, and Cajun specialties, and fresh Gulf seafood, and authentic TexMex, and-well, you get the picture. Just come hungry; we'll take care of the rest.

See you then. LET'S MAKE SOME NOISE, IAAIS!