KPFK's July membership drive closed on August 7. Nine hundred and sixty-five gifts came in over those eighteen days, and the programmers, staff and volunteers who worked the drive spent long hours on the air and on the phones to bring them in. Thank you, on both counts.
I want to show you how the drive did, how it compares to every drive the station has run since 2021, and then be straight with you about what those numbers do and do not solve.
The short version is that on-air fundraising is working better than it has in years, and the station still spends more each month than it takes in. Both of those things are true at the same time. The first one is worth celebrating. The second one is why you have been hearing the word solvency from Pacifica lately, and it is the problem in front of me now.
One thing to say plainly at the outset: this shortfall is not new. It has been building for several years, and it long predates my tenure. What is new is that the station has run out of the thing that was quietly covering it.
What carried the station through it was not fundraising. It was two bequests, gifts left to KPFK in the wills of two listeners, totaling about $544,000. Over the same period the station's operating shortfall came to about $547,000. Those two numbers are almost identical. Without those two gifts, the operating account would not have covered the cost of running this station, and they are not there to do it a third time.
Drives vary in length, from just over two weeks to nearly two months, so total dollars alone is a poor comparison. Dividing each drive's total by the number of days it ran shows how productive the time on air actually was.
The fall drive lands in roughly the same seasonal window every year, which makes it the cleanest year-to-year comparison available. Bars show dollars per day; the total raised and the number of days on air are printed below each one. The 2026 fall drive has not run yet.
The 2025 fall drive raised more in total than any fall drive since 2021, and did it in 23 days rather than the 32 to 37 days those earlier drives ran. Shorter drives raise more per day almost automatically, so the day count is worth reading alongside the rate. In 2025 both moved in the same direction. Drive dates: 2021 Oct 5 to Nov 5, 2022 Oct 4 to Nov 6, 2023 Oct 3 to Nov 3, 2024 Oct 1 to Nov 6, 2025 Sep 23 to Oct 15.
Dollars per day are up. The average gift is not. Drives in 2021 averaged around $145 a gift. Since 2022 the figure has bounced between roughly $105 and $145 with no upward trend, settling near $120. Recent drives are raising more by reaching more people, not by asking more of each one.
This matters more than the headline number. A membership base giving smaller gifts has to keep growing just to hold steady, and it leaves the station leaning on occasional large gifts and bequests more than any station should. The July 2026 figure here excludes one large gift received during that drive, which would otherwise distort a single point on the line.
Over the twelve months ending in June 2026, this is the gap between what it costs to run the station and what comes in the door from all sources: on-air drives, mail, online giving, and everything else.
That is roughly a quarter of a million dollars a year. To close it through on-air fundraising alone, at the rate the last two drives achieved, KPFK would need more than 30 additional days on air every year. That is two more full drives on top of the current schedule, permanently, in a year that already has five.
I don't think that is the answer, and I don't think you want it to be. More time asking for money is less time doing the thing the money pays for. So the work ahead is not simply fundraising harder. It is bringing what the station spends into line with what the station reliably raises, and building sources of support that do not depend on how well a given week on the air goes.
Pacifica's Executive Director noted in her August report to the National Board that I have completed a 28-month analysis of KPFK's financial position, and that it will be the basis for a long-term solvency plan for this station. That is accurate. I built it from the station's own bank records, and it is the most complete picture of KPFK's operating position that has been assembled in some time. I will be sharing more of it, and the decisions that follow from it, in the weeks ahead.
Let me be clear about what closing this gap will take. It will not close on its own, and it will not be closed by good intentions or by asking harder. A shortfall this size is not a problem of the transmitter or the license. It is a question of what the station spends its money on and how it is organized, which means the changes ahead will be visible, and some of them will affect things people care about. I would rather tell you that now, in a post about a drive that went well, than have you find out later and wonder why nobody said anything.
What I can tell you is that this is a solvable problem, that I know what solving it requires, and that I will show my work as I go. That is the commitment I am willing to make.
In the meantime, the honest ask: a monthly gift is worth several times a one-time gift of the same size, because it is the only kind of support the station can actually plan around. If you have been giving during drives, moving that to a monthly commitment is the single most meaningful thing you can do for KPFK right now.