Endowing NCPR: Adirondack News Fund

Adirondack News Bureau Adirondack News Page Chief: Brian Mann Email: brian@ncpr.org Phone: 518-891-9708 Elise and Woody Widlund. North Creek Dear Adirondacker from manager Ellen Rocco North Country Public Radio is a success story. Because of you, because of your friends and neighbors, and because of many people you've never met who live and work in or spend time in the Park. During the past twenty years, as we've built an Adirondack service, so many people have heard what we heard-the sound of a radio station we could all recognize as our own-and helped us to become better and better. Now, I am asking a few people like you to help lift all of us to a new place, to reach higher ground with the establishment of an endowment to guarantee funding for our Adirondack service: the news bureau, the web resources, the media sponsorship of community events, the installation of transmitters to communities not yet receiving our signal, and all the other pieces that add to the richness of what NCPR does in the Park. I am asking you because you have the means and the vision to understand that NCPR is important for everyone in the Adirondacks--and so many people in the Park are already stretching their finances to contribute $25 or $50 in membership money each year. Indeed, the station raises more than a third of its annual operating budget from gifts like these. Almost $400,000. Plus almost $300,000 in contributions from local businesses, averaging about $1,000 each. In the North Country. These numbers tell our story, too. I am asking you to give this document, the story it tells and the vision it outlines, serious consideration because North Country Public Radio is a trusted institution. Ephemeral as our medium may be, real people run this station, and listeners trust us because we do what we say we're going to do, we live our lives next door to our listeners, and we believe in and trust the community of people who inhabit the Adirondack north country.

Adirondack News Fund Campaign: Only $340,000 to go to reach $2,000,000 Goal

This campaign is about independence - the independence to tell our stories, to capture our voices, to connect with each other across the six million-acre Adirondack Park. Independence is only possible with secure funding free from the influence of funding based on the political or economic environment.

And so we are raising a permanent fund in support of NCPR's Adirondack News Bureau, ensuring our independence and continuity in the Adirondack Park.

Widlund $200,000 Challenge Met in Wee Hours of December 31

We thank Elise and Woody Widlund of North River for inspiring us - and our generous investors - across the region!

Widlund Challenge Matchers:
Thank You!

• Michael and Ellen Bettmann
• Chip and Sandy Bissell
• Kathy and Mike Clarke
• Ed and Becky Milner
• Dan and Carol Luthringshauser
• Baird and Nancy Edmunds
• Julia and Carter Walker
• Phyllis Wendt Pierce
• Aileen Townsend and Peter Paravoti
• Charles and Sally Svenson
• Larry and Nancy Master
• Leslie Anne and Jim King
• Polly and Bengt Ohman
• Anonymous Inlet
• Ed and Carolyn Fowler
• Barrie Vanderpoel
• Anonymous North Creek
• Carol and Glenn Pearsall
• Dr. and Mrs. Raymond Maddocks
• Jackie Altman
• Mike and Lora Schultz
• Carol Poole
• Tricia and Phil Winterer
• Evergreen Fund
• John Hopkins and Lynne Edmunds
• Bruce and Ellen McLanahan
• Estate of Anne Malone
• Anonymous BML //
• //Charles McCutchen
• Hank Hoffman
• Ann Adams and Gerald Kusler
• Anonymous Keene Valley
• Gloria Fant
• Brooks Family, Lake Placid
• Margot Ernst
• Barbara Glaser
• Harriet and Andrew Singer
• Anonymous, Lake Placid
• Linda and Sarah Cohen
• Anonymous, Lake Clear

First Adirondack Endowment Challenge Met Four Months Ahead of Schedule:

Four generous couples came together in 2006 to create a challenge fund
to inspire those who care about NCPR and the Adirondacks: Joan & Sandy Weill, Margot & John Ernst, Lee & Nancy Keet and David Brunner & Rhonda Butler. THANKS to the generosity of our listeners, we met their $300k challenge months ahead of schedule!

We thank the generous investors who helped us meet the first Adirondack Challenge:

• Allan Newell
• Steve and Judy Hopkins
• Anonymous
• Bob and Judy Lievense
• Linda and Sarah Cohen
• Harriet and Andy Singer
• Joe and Rita Coney
• Tim Kemp and Suzanne Miller
• Linda and John Friedlander
• Anonymous, Glens Falls and Thurman
• Peter and Kathy Wyckoff
• Mike Ellis and Kathleen Hanna
• Rooney and Dick Poole
• Gilda and Cecil Wray
• Sara Jane and William Dehoff
• Jack and Eve Bogle
• Mary Beth and Michael Peabody
• Staritch Foundation
• Pooh and Charlie Ritchie
• Prospect Hill Foundation / Beinecke Family
• Frances Beinecke
• Charles McCutcheon
• Brian Mann and Susan Waters
• Ellen Rocco / Susan Sweeney Smith
  

For more information email Susan Sweeney Smith susan@ncpr.org

NCPR's Adirondack Service Fund is managed by the The Adirondack Community Trust based in Lake Placid.

About Listening

from Bill McKibben

Think of the Adirondacks and what sound comes to mind? The crack of a beavertail against an evening pond, perhaps, or the pines sighing in the breeze. Depending on the season, maybe the sound of a skate blade cutting into black ice, or the muffled semi-silence of a fat-flaked snowfall.

But 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, only one sound can be heard in virtually every corner of the park: the sound of North Country Public Radio. This vast region, bigger than Vermont or Massachusetts, has no newspaper that reaches every town, no tv station of its own. The only media source that ties together the park comes from the 19 transmitters scattered around the region.

Those antennas transmit dependable news from the outside world: Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and the rest of public radio's national offerings. But they also bring engaged, accurate, and comprehensive coverage of the Adirondacks, knitting together the diverse towns and hamlets.

One day Brian Mann, the Adirondack bureau chief, may be covering the ninety-miler canoe race, or following forest rangers as they try to cope with the bears at Marcy Dam. The next he may be focusing on how tiny North Country parishes cope with the loss of priests, or finding out what life is like inside the park's many prisons. Meanwhile, station manager Ellen Rocco, host of Readers and Writers on the Air, regularly interviews some of the nation's finest authors. Local folk and classical musicians appear many afternoons on the station's diverse music programs. Every year NCPR wins a skein of regional and national awards for its news and cultural coverage; and every year it wins new listeners among all kinds of Adirondackers.

Church supper coming up? Snowstorm appearing on the western horizon? North Country Public Radio is not only the best place to find out, it's often the only place. And in an emergency-the great ice storm of 1998, the creeping forest fires of 2002--it becomes clear just how much all of us who live and vacation here depend on the station. Not only that--if you listen to NPR's national news programs, you've doubtless heard how often NCPR's features are picked up for airing across the country. No station its size matches its contribution to the national network, a real tribute to its journalistic skill.

Now is the chance to guarantee the future of the station. Its listeners and business underwriters continue to be generous in their contributions, supporting the basic day to day expense of running the station with annual pledges. But that support is stretched thin in an area of modest incomes and sparse population. It's hard to make ends meet when trees outnumber people a thousand to one in your broadcast area.

And in recent years NCPR has taken on additional expenses. The Adirondack News Bureau, based at Paul Smith's College, represents the station's unique commitment to coverage of the mountains. But it's extraordinarily rare for a public radio station to operate a satellite bureau, and the cost is considerable. Meanwhile, the advent of new technologies represents new opportunities and new costs. The station's website has become the clear hub for regional news and events--one of the best in the nation. This service needs sustaining support.

And so, for the first time, the station is undertaking a major endowment drive. The money, which will be invested by an external proven team of advisors, will be used to underwrite those new programs that go beyond the daily operations of the station

I believe in North Country Public Radio. I know and trust its staff. Most important: none of us who live or vacation in the Park could really imagine being in the Adirondacks without the station.