Support great audio on Giving Tuesday
Hi, friends. It's Abby, the head of R2 Studios. You've probably gotten a dozen emails already today asking you for money on Giving Tuesday. There are hundreds of worthy causes out there that deserve your time and energy, not to mention your money. But I'm doing it too--I'm asking for your financial support.
Here's a little story for you:
I started Consolation Prize in fall of 2020. Mills, RRCHNM's executive director, and I had kicked around a podcast idea with a partner earlier in 2020, but we had concluded that we didn't have the necessary experience to apply for external funding to do it. (Grant funds have supported the entire center for over 25 years.) How do you get experience? You do the thing.
I had done a podcast-focused class in spring 2020, which got derailed in a huge way because of covid. But at the end of the semester, despite everything, the class created 6 podcast episodes that they could be proud of. That's how I knew we could do a podcast at the Center, despite covid, despite our inexperience, despite our lack of funds. Mills gave me a lot of rein to do what I wanted with our first narrative podcast.
For our first episode, I did all the interviews and recorded all the narration from my 2x5-ft. bedroom closet. Over the season, I upgraded my mic, but it wasn't till the very end of the season that I finally got to record somewhere other than sitting on my closet floor. Our team got better and better at all parts of the production process as we worked together on every episode.
Our full team didn't meet each other in person until May of 2021. We made a whole season of Consolation Prize completely remotely. When I go back and listen to our first episodes, I still think they hold up, but we got so much better over the course of the season. We made a lot of mistakes in a lot of ways, but we learned.
Why am I telling you all of this? Because this is just the beginning. We started in an incredibly difficult time, with so little to work with. And yet we made something really good. (I’m only a little biased. :) )
Now we’re in a much better place. We have an office in our center that we’re turning into a real recording studio. Our teams can meet in person now. We have a full year of experience in doing a very hard kind of podcasting. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has given us a very generous grant to help us get our studio off the ground.
We still have that scrappy, make-it-work attitude. We’re taking the lessons of Consolation Prize and transferring that knowledge to shows like The Green Tunnel and the shows we’re currently developing.
But we still need your support. Our Mellon grant gives us our start, but it’s not end of the line for our financial needs–it’s the beginning.
So yeah, I’m asking for your money today. The more funds we raise in addition to the grant we already received, the better we’re able to produce good podcasts. And good podcasts take a lot of time and money, so we need your help to sustain our work.
Here are a few things I’ll promise you right now:
Even though I’m asking you for money, we’re never ever going to charge you to listen to our shows. They’re free. They always will be.
Your support will be used to bring new, diverse voices into R2 Studios, telling stories that you need to know in order to understand how we got where we are.
We’ll never release anything that’s not high quality, deeply researched, and compellingly told. You can be proud of supporting our work.
Your support goes for a number of things:
Paying the people who do work for us. We pay musicians, voice actors, sound designers, and many others.
Paying for the hosting that allows us to distribute our shows, and the software and platforms we use to create the shows.
Increasing our marketing to get our shows into new spaces and places.
And many other small incidental expenses!
So, how can you give? You can give either in a one-time donation or as a recurring gift. Any amount you can give is very much appreciated.
You can find out more about how to do it here at our giving link.
Be sure to tell us which show you want a thank-you gift from in the comments!
Truly, from the bottom of my heart, I’m grateful for anything you can give. I think I can speak for the rest of the folks at R2 Studios when I say that your support means the world to us.
Take good care,
Abby