It has been a whole month since crossing the finish line on our 2024 Funding Drive:
The Sounds of Radiotown!
From the bottom of our hearts, we want to extend a big THANK YOU to everybody who helped make this years Funding Drive such a success. With the help our generous donors, our hard-working staff, and our super star volunteers, as of this writing, we were able to reach over 2800 donors with a station total of over $218,000! We wanted to give a bit of a flyover view of The Sounds of Radiotown, showcasing both the hard work put into making it happen, as well as a passing view of everything as it went down.
Preparing for 2024’s Funding Drive
Work on Funding Drive happens very early on in the year, with staff getting together to plan out the year’s theme, artist partnership, logistics, etc. It takes a lot of trial and error to figure out the fun stuff, with many ideas being left on the cutting room floor. After some strong contenders, the theme of “busy town” was settled on. While conceptually a bit of a challenge to sell the idea, ultimately it lined up with the station’s community focused values really well. For the art, we wanted something busy, energetic, and stimulating to match the energy of a bustling town. We landed with Edmonton eggpunk Bridget Trout, who delivered the perfect Scarry-esque artwork that you saw all throughout the drive!
By June, in the midst of summer festival season, we started work on 2024’s incentive swag, with the shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers, and posters, all featuring the artwork of Bridget Trout. This year is a very special year as we also partnered with AGGÜDO Coffee and Last Best Brewery! AGGÜDO helped us with our $500 incentive: A refillable jar of specialty coffee beans. Last Best brewed up the Radio Town Lager, which was on tap and on shelf around the city and at our events. With the help of photographer Micheal Grondin and our superstar volunteers Victoria and Stevie, we went down to Aggudo and ContainR Park to get photos of all our stuff!
Welcome to Radiotown!
On October 1st, CJSW officially launched its 2024 Funding Drive Campaign: The Sounds of Radiotown! This was accompanied by the October 3rd Launch Party at Ship & Anchor, an annual Funding Drive tradition. The night was spearheaded by live broadcasts of Alternative to What and Union Jacked, followed by vinyl DJs for the rest of the night. Thank you so much to all the hosts and DJs for holding the night down! The night also saw the debut of the Radio Town Lager, which was present in many other events throughout the month.
On October 12th, we stopped by our friend and partner business Aggudo Coffee for a live broadcast of Thee Acheulean Age, hosted live by this years funding drive coordinator Syf Robertson! She provided the perfect soundtrack for an afternoon coffee with an eclectic mix of country, folk, and blues. On October 13th, Quiz Shoe happened at Tubby’s! Hosted by the head honcho himself Adam Kamis, citizens of Radiotown were tested on their city knowledge for sweet prizes provided by CJSW, Quiz Shoe, and Aggudo Coffee.
On the night of the 17th, we did some Funding Drive pre-gaming with Karaoke at the Palomino Smoke House! Hosted by our own Emily Donville and Adam Kamis, the stage saw an enthusiastic bunch hitting the stage and singing their hearts out. It was especially great to see members of our community come out and get their vocal cords warmed up for the week ahead.
Radiotown’s Week-Long Block Party
On the 18th, the week everybody had been waiting for finally arrived. The Sounds Of Radiotown kicked off at 9pm on Mint Condition, leading to a bustling week of fundraising. From taxi rides to on-air karaoke, basically every stop on the trip through Radiotown was a blast. Thank you our superstar cast of programmers for putting on stellar radio!
On Sunday, October 20th , we saw the fall edition of the (in our humble opinion) greatest music collector’s show in the city: The Calgary Music Collectors Show. We partnered with the folks there to help get the word out about the event and raise some money for the station. A great day of wares and tunes from some of the province’s best record vendors!
Finally, on Friday October 25th, The Road Pops closed out our week for yet another successful Funding Drive year. By 6pm, The Sounds of Radiotown reached $202,480 in donations pledged to the station, coming in from 2491 donors with impeccable taste in campus & community radio!
We also wanted to extend a huge thank you to The Italian Supermarket for helping us with catering and providing our station crew with delicious food all week long. A filled stomach definitely helps keep the morale up for hardworking times like this!
“1001 thank-yous to are in order to all volunteers that helped out in any capacity during the 2024 Funding Drive. Whether you answered phones, supported your fellow programmers, engaged with our socials, cleaned dishes, assisted with our events, took a stack of pledge forms to get donations from your circles and everything else in between, you are the reason why our Sounds of Radiotown campaign was a success. You should all feel so proud to be a part of a such an incredible group of community-minded people.”
-Adam Kamis from the October 25th issue of the weekly HQ newsletter.
“I take great pride when it comes to our on-air programming and I am continually impressed by the way our community continues to push boundaries and defy expectations when it comes to conventional radio programming. I think this last week was a great example of this, and there were so many moments that had me laughing out loud or absolutely beaming from ear to ear. Be proud of the amazing work you’ve achieved this week and most importantly, thank you for being an essential part of our amazing community.“
-Emily Donville from the October 25th issue of the weekly HQ newsletter.
The Haunting of Radiotown
With our goal met and the week over, naturally the next item on the itinerary was to party! Down at the #1 Legion on the 26th, we kicked off the night with the Nightmare on 7th Avenue Halloween party! All floors of the Legion were busy with bodies, celebrating another successful Funding Drive and the spookiest day of the year with Calgary’s most anticipated Halloween party.
Check out some of the photos from the party. (Photos by Michael Grondin – @m.grondin.photo)
The Legion had all 3 floors bustling with bodies. Bands on the main floor, video dance party on the top floor, and the rave cave in the basement. Huge thank you to our lineup of bands who came on stage and performed covers of city-esque songs! That night, we heard from the likes of:
- The CJSW Family Band
- Death Knell
- Easy Idiot
- Evan Wilson Experience
- Glitter Glue
- Hip Hip Thursday
- Iron Tusk
- Lucky Piece
- Miesha and the Spanks
- Smoocher
- Perra
- Pinball 1973
- Victrix
- WANTS
Shout out to the DJs of the night as well, as they held down the turntables for the night:
- Jonathan Crane and Claire Couttes holding down the rave cave
- Joan Sarro and Matthew Henry holding down the vinyl
Closing out the night, we had the judging of the costume contest! Every year, folks come out with the most creative costumes to be judged by our judgy judges. We had three categories for the night: Best Costume, Best Group Costume, and Worst Costume.
Congratulations to The Friends Card, The Lollipop Guild, and Jojo Siwa!
(Photobooth photos by Heather Saitz)
Finally, on the 28th, we returned to Ship & Anchor for the Funding Drive Ship Arcade, wrapping the drive up in the same venue it started.
And so concludes another year of CJSW’s annual Funding Drive season. With the dust settling, our staff is now in the process of resting and fixing our sleep schedules. Once again, we want to thank everybody who was involved with making this drive such a success: Our hard-working staff, our dedicated volunteers, and our perennially generous donors. Here’s to another year of great radio!