As a nonprofit, fundraising is always one of your top concerns. Your organization relies on the generosity of donors to keep your cause going, and you constantly need to come up with new and innovative ways to entice donations. Even in a world where nonprofits are always looking for fundraising ideas, there’s one method that continues to be underutilized – podcasts!

In this article, we’ll dig deeper into why podcasts are ripe for nonprofits and provide 3 ideas to help get you started fundraising with podcasts.

Why Fundraise with Podcasts?

It’s difficult to convince a stranger to give you money. As a nonprofit, you have to be clear about your mission, build trust with the public, and create long term relationships with your donors.

Most mediums you spread your message in don’t lend themselves to this kind of community building because there isn’t enough time to share your message, they are too expensive, ephemeral, or they feel inauthentic. Podcasts are the antidote to all of this because:

Podcasts are Popular
Listeners Trust their Favorite Podcasters
Podcast Ads are Effective
Podcasts are Evergreen
Podcasts Allow for Precision Audience Targeting

Let’s get into it.

Podcasts are Popular

Podcasts have continued to get more popular every year. In 2017, 67 million Americans listened to at least one podcast per month. By 2019, that number had risen to 90 million. Finally, in 2022 podcasting passed a milestone of over ⅓ of Americans (104 million) listening to podcasts monthly.

Over the past decade, podcasting has proven it’s not a fad – it’s a mainstay of modern entertainment. At the same time, podcasting is a young medium ripe for newcomers (like your organization) to participate and make a name for themselves in the industry.

Listeners Trust their Favorite Podcasters

The popularity of podcasts is in large part due to the intimacy of the medium. Listeners get to listen and hang out with their favorite podcasters for hours at a time, without any outside interference. A dedicated podcast listener will tell you that you can’t help but develop some kinship and trust with your favorite podcast hosts.

As a nonprofit, you can utilize the inherent trust of listeners for your fundraising efforts in a variety of ways (more on those methods later).

Podcasts are Cost Effective

Most of the fundraising methods we’ll cover in this article are completely free, with the notable exception of podcast advertising. But the money spent on podcast advertising is surprisingly effective, especially when compared to other mediums.

To start, 45% of podcast listeners make at least $75,000 per year, meaning that podcast listeners tend to have a high discretionary income. Which they love to spend on podcast advertisements, with more than half of listeners reporting a purchase from a podcast advertiser.

To top it all off, podcast ads are really cheap, especially compared to syndicated radio or television. We’ve written a whole article diving deep into podcast ad rates, but the short version is that they cost $10-30 per one thousand listeners. A similar 30-second radio ad can cost hundreds of dollars, depending on the market.

Podcasts are Evergreen

In a world where most media is disposable, evergreen content is extremely rare and valuable. You might think that the popularity of a podcast dwindles over time, but you’d be wrong. 48% of all podcast downloads are of old episodes, meaning that the hard work you put into every podcast can yield donations, no matter how old.

Podcasts Allow For Precision Audience Targeting

One of the issues with fundraising is reaching the right audience. You know potential donors are out there…if only they knew about you! Podchaser Pro, the world’s most comprehensive podcast database, is the only tool you need to discover the perfect podcasts for your nonprofit.

With Pro, you’re just a few clicks away from podcasts that align with your message. We also have exclusive insights to help you vet podcasts, like listener data, demographics, sponsor history, and more.

3 Nonprofit Fundraising Ideas with Podcasts

For any organization there are three main methods to utilize podcasts, and each of these methods provide their own unique opportunities for fundraising. The three methods are:

Start a branded podcast
Guest on other podcasts
Advertise on podcasts

Let’s dig into the myriad ways of fundraising with each of these.

1) Start a Branded Podcast

Branded podcasts are podcasts owned and produced by a specific brand. Beyond that, branded podcasts can be anything. Some are interview podcasts, others storytelling podcasts, and some are even serialized dramas. Branded podcasts provide creative freedom, allowing your nonprofit to tell your story in whatever method is most effective for you.

There are a few ways to make money with your branded podcast, but all of them require you to grow your audience. It’s important to note that growing a podcast is a slow and steady process, so if you’re looking for a quick fix to your fundraising efforts, try the other methods we’ll discuss later.

What branded podcasts lack in speed, they make up for in longevity. Here’s four ways you can consistently use to fundraise with your branded podcast.

A) Donor Exclusive Content

Exclusive content is one of the primary methods podcasters use to make money. If listeners donate a certain amount every month, they get access to bonus episodes of your podcast. Patreon is the most popular platform to host exclusive podcasts, but many large companies like Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast network, Pushkin, use Apple Podcast Subscriptions.

This Is a great avenue for podcasts with a small but dedicated audience. If you have 2,000 listeners and only 20 of them donate $5 every month, you’re suddenly getting paid $100 a month. This may seem like small potatoes, but that’s only with 2,000 listeners. On the higher end, political comedy podcast Chapo Trap House earns over $178,000 every month from their 41,000 subscribers.

B) Sell Merchandise

It’s possible that your nonprofit already sells merch as part of your fundraising strategy, but your branded podcast can breathe new life into your merchandising efforts. You can advertise your merchandise on your podcast, and create podcast specific merch to excite your donors.

Many podcasts have created merchandising empires, like the true crime podcast, Last Podcast on The Left. They’ve translated their spooky aesthetic and subject matter into a lifestyle brand, featuring products like t-shirts, playing cards, and even a bicycle.

To sell merchandise, we recommend TeePublic. On their site you can create an entire line of merchandise including clothes, phone cases, posters, magnets, pillows, and more. The best part about TeePublic is you don’t even need to design the merchandise yourself. Instead you can pull in designs from their artist community that you think will appeal to your donors.

If you claim your podcast on Podchaser, you can even add your TeePublic store to your Podchaser podcast page, Two Chatty Broads has added their Tee Public store to their Podchaser page, broadening their potential customer base to all Podchaser users.

C) Ask for Donations

This might seem obvious but sometimes you don’t have to be clever to fundraise properly. If you are creating content that your listeners love, and you are showing that their donations are being put to good use – you can simply request donations on air during your episodes. It helps to share a custom URL exclusive to your podcast, so you can track and attribute your donations directly to your show.

While not a nonprofit, the podcast network Maximum Fun has a yearly fundraising drive, similar to public radio, that they call MaxFunDrive. For one week a year, they solicit donations and offer exclusive rewards like bonus content and merch. Thanks to the MaxFunDrive, they’ve been able to remain an independently run podcast network since 2005.

D) Podcast Sponsorship

Once your branded podcast grows its audience a bit more, a new fundraising method becomes available to you – getting brands to advertise on your podcast. Podcast advertising is a huge industry, reaching $1 billion last year, so if you’re trying to make money for your nonprofit, there is plenty to go around.

To get your show sponsored, you’ll need around 2,000 downloads per episode before anybody shows interest in working with you. If you have less than that, don’t sweat! We’ve written a few articles with tips on how to grow your audience.

And if you want to learn more about how to get podcast sponsors, check out our full article with 3 methods on how to get sponsored.

2) Podcast Guesting

Podcast guesting is the most powerful promotional tool available in podcasting. It’s a free long form way to expose your organization to a new and receptive audience. If your podcast guest appearance goes well, you can also generate more traffic to your sites, increase brand awareness, create brand authority, boost your SEO, network with thought leaders, AND create repurposable content. There’s a lot to love about podcast guesting…but eagle eye readers may have noticed that none of those benefits are direct ways to fundraise.

And it’s true, it’s more difficult to directly solicit donors while podcast guesting because it’s not your show. It’s in the name; when podcast guesting – you are the host’s guest, and it can be incredibly rude to be salesy on their show.

While podcast guesting may not be a direct fundraising opportunity, it will still make you money in the long run. Podcast audiences trust their favorite hosts, and by inviting you onto their podcast, they are extending their seal of approval to their audience. If listeners like your appearance, they are more than likely to go check out your nonprofit, and then donate over time.

3) Podcast Advertisements

Not only can you get advertisers on your show, but you can advertise on other podcasts as well. And while it may be counterintuitive to pay for advertisements to raise funds – podcast advertising has proven to be a worthy investment.

This is partially due to the reasons we highlighted earlier (podcast popularity, listeners trusting hosts, cost effectiveness, evergreen content, and precision targeting), but there are even more reasons why you should consider podcast fundraising.

In fact, new research was published last year in the Association of Marketing Theory & Practice Journal that describes the unique benefits podcasting provides to advertisers. You can read our full article about that research here, but there is also one specific detail that we’ll highlight that appeals directly to nonprofits.

In interviewing 293 participants, the researchers found that listeners are hungry for podcast advertising with alternative calls-to-action. Most podcast advertisements involve a discount code to purchase a service or product. Listeners have been burnt out by the repetition of this kind of podcast advertising, so as a nonprofit you have an opportunity to stand-out from the compeition.

For example, if your brand is trying to spread the word about your non profit initiative, allow podcasters to earnestly pitch your mission to their fans. The researchers believe that approach will be more successful than more traditional, less personal advertisements and calls-to-action.

How to Get Started Podcast Fundraising with Podchaser Pro

For any of these fundraising ideas, you’re going to need to make data-driven decisions. Starting a branded podcast, you’ll need to perform market research to avoid oversaturated topics and find a unique angle within your nonprofit’s niche. And for podcast guesting and advertising, you’ll need to discover, vet, and contact podcasts that align with your message.

Podchaser Pro, the world’s most comprehensive podcast database, solves all these problems, making it easy for nonprofits to get started podcasting. In just a few clicks you can discover great shows, dig into data (like listenership and demographic), and then access verified contact information for thousands of podcasts. If you want to learn more about how your nonprofit can use Podchaser Pro, we’ve written a full article that gets you started.

3 Ideas to Help Nonprofits Fundraise with Podcasts

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