I have gone to lunch and come back. It was amusing to watch the upvotes and downvotes for my remarks before I left. That seems to still be going on.
I appreciate that you love it. But that is exactly why they don't need a begathon and shouldn't have one. They could post their donation goal for the month on the site (at the beginning of the month) and post regular updates as to how much they have gotten so far. If it is looking to be a shortfall, an email to their subscribers would be appropriate. No begging required. They offer something of value and they need something of value in return to keep it going. That requires communication, not begging.
And, frankly, with an established audience and relatively highish monthly inflow, at this point they should be hiring someone with experience to help them raise and manage an endowment so one slow month doesn't threaten to take them off the air. Their begathon loudly announces that their business model needs work as it isn't being handled very professionally or responsibly.
I did a lot of volunteer work over the years and I have studied how Not-For-Profit models work. I am not just talking out my ass here.
Care to be a little less heartless. SOMA-FM is great and helps many of us get through the day at our jobs.
That's an extremely funny (ironic) remark to make to someone who is in the kind of deep doo doo I am in through no fault of my own. My debts are due to getting myself well when the rest of the world not only said it could not be done but actively tried to hinder my efforts. I could, instead, be using many thousands of dollars per year (or even month) of medical care at taxpayer expense. No one cares that I am saving them money and very few people care that my situation is incredibly unjust.
Because Soma provides a donation-only service that many of us consume, and it is very likely that many of us would rather pony up a little cash than see it go away.
I run several websites that provide free information. They take donations. I am trying to figure out how to get traffic and effectively monetize them. Sounds to me like Soma needs to work on their business model.
Not to sound glib, but it sounds like you need to work on your business model. Soma has been 'in business' as a community supported operation for over 10 years now. They have the occasional shortfall, wherein they blast to the community and usually make it up.
It should probably be pointed out that they have more than one employee, and donations aren't their only source of revenue, and they're still able to operate their service without commercials, which would ordinarily be their entire source of funding. Simply put, they've found their business model in spades, and if they absolutely had to, I'm sure they could fall back to a commercial-supported endeavor, though I don't know if they would be willing to.
I'm sorry for you and your situation, but I don't see any reason that should begrudge you their continued success.
Their appeal is that they are community supported, which allows the radio programming to be commercial free and basically allows them to play whatever they think is good. It's a vast departure from mainstream radio programming.
That it seems offensive to you is frankly baffling me, but to each their own I suppose. Regardless, this is exactly the model that's worked for them for the past however many years and assuming this isn't a harbinger of things to come, will hopefully continue to work for them.
They provide a service that they could easily charge for (as evidenced by their success for this long) but choose to allow their service to run as cheap or free as they can get away with. They obviously aren't in it for the money, and knowing that, I should think it would take some of the distastefulness away.