Which WHYY Projects Need My Foundation Support?

Grants to Support General Operations

Grants for general operations are used to support WHYY's core services for our five key service areas which include Arts & Culture; News & Public Affairs; Children's Service; Wider Horizons; and Adult Learning. They also support the local broadcasts of national programs such as Nova, Masterpiece Theater, All Things Considered, and Fresh Air with Terry Gross, as well as popular WHYY productions heard in our region, including Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane. Finally, general operating grants ensure that our equipment is maintained and state-of-the-art, and that we have enough staffing to ensure that your favorite programs and services are available on WHYY TV12, WHYY 91FM radio, WHYY.org, and in the community.

We are currently seeking support for the following projects. If you are interested in supporting a program that isn't listed here, please call Richelle Ogle, Manager, Foundations and Institutions, for assistance. She can be reached at (215) 351-2019, or by email at rogle@whyy.org.

Experience: Increasing the Visibility of and Participation in Arts and Culture Organizations in the Delaware Valley

Public broadcasting has been successful at building viewer and listener expectation and loyalty around on-air cultural content, but less successful at increasing interest and participation in off-air cultural opportunities. The tri-state region's many cultural institutions and substantial cultural constituency recognize WHYY's reach and dedication to arts and culture, and its service as the de facto media infrastructure for the cultural community. Still, while the tri-state region has increased the physical footprint of its cultural facilities in recent years, the media footprint dedicated to communicating the range of opportunities available and encouraging participation in the region's cultural organizations has not expanded equivalently.

To address this issue, WHYY is developing Experience, a quarterly television arts and culture magazine. In general, Experience highlights opportunities to visit and participate in large and small, well-known and emerging arts and cultural organizations throughout the Delaware Valley. In some cases, including an Experience "magazine" program currently in development that focuses on the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary, the half-hour program will take a themed approach. In addition, brief spotlights or interstitials (90 seconds to three minutes in length) will be drawn from the Experience TV magazine. These brief Experience spotlights will air between programs on WHYY TV12 to capture the interest of our large arts and culture-focused audience. A lively, engaging and informative new means of cultural programming, Experience will encourage viewers to expand, explore and learn from real-life cultural experiences.

For More Information on how you can support Experience, please call Richelle Ogle, Manager, Foundations and Institutions, at (215) 351-2019.

Taxi Stories/Sonic IDs for WHYY 91FM Radio

Hail a cab and take a ride in any metropolis, and chances are the driver is listening to the local public radio station. In the case of the Greater Philadelphia region, most cabbies tune to WHYY 91FM radio. In response to this phenomenon, WHYY producers began asking questions--questions such as "Who are the cabbies?" "Where do they come from?" "How do they look at our world?" "What insights do they have into world affairs?"

To answer these questions, WHYY is creating a series of 26 radio spotlights, of which half will focus on the thoughts of cabbies in the Philadelphia region. The remaining 13 radio spotlights will be brief interviews with other everyday people--homemakers, car mechanics, street vendors, local artists, waiters, etc.--people whose views are seldom heard in our culture.

Through these radio spotlights, ordinary people, starting with cab drivers, will have an opportunity to express their views and talk about what is important to them. Producer and interviewer Viet Le will flag down drivers and interview them, capturing their stories. Via WHYY 91FM, our listeners will take a ride for a few minutes along with Viet Le and the cabbie. We will hear where the cabbies come from, how they arrived here in Philadelphia and in the United States, what they think is important, and how they feel about carting passengers about town. Whether the cabbie is a recent immigrant hoping for a better life or the victim of company down-sizing looking for a way to make ends meet, we'll hear each person's story and what engages him or her.

For More Information on how you can support Taxi Stories/Sonic IDs for WHYY 91FM Radio, please call Richelle Ogle, Manager, Foundations and Institutions, at (215) 351-2019.

Save the Fresh Air Archives!

Fresh Air with Terry Gross, produced by WHYY 91FM radio, is a Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues. It is one of public radio's most popular programs, with 4.5 million people tuning to the show's intimate conversations on more than 450 National Public Radio stations across the country, as well as in Europe on the World Radio Network.

Since 1975, Fresh Air host Terry Gross has interviewed thousands of prominent Americans in arts, culture, politics and other fields. These award-winning conversations are a national treasure, an informative, revealing profile of American culture, interests and perspective as they have evolved over the past quarter century.

For years, Fresh Air interviews were recorded on reel-to-reel audiotape. The older tapes in the Fresh Air Archives are deteriorating, and the future of these invaluable interviews is at risk. Our goal is to preserve these interviews by transferring them to digital format and indexing them so that they will be available for future use by listeners, scholars, historians and WHYY members.

For More Information on how you can help Save the Fresh Air Archives!, please call Richelle Ogle, Manager, Foundations and Institutions, at (215) 351-2019.

Ready to Learn

Part of the mission of The Children's Service at WHYY is to provide families, caregivers, and educators with the resources, skills, and motivation to support and enrich the developmental and educational growth of children in the Delaware Valley. Ready To Learn (RTL) workshops are a core component of The Children's Service and part of a national effort by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) to go beyond airing outstanding children's television programs to become a comprehensive educational resource for children, parents and caregivers. WHYY wants those who attend RTL workshops to walk away with new information, tools and techniques on developing early literacy skills, and other means of preparing young children for school, including parents/children for whom English is a second language.

At the heart of Ready To Learn is the outstanding children's programming provided by PBS. For over 30 years, children's programs on WHYY have helped to ensure that children start school ready to learn and continue learning outside the classroom. Today, WHYY dedicates half of its weekday television schedule, as well as weekend morning hours, to public broadcasting's outstanding programming for children, including Sesame Street, Between The Lions, Arthur, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, Reading Rainbow, Dragon Tales, and Zoboomafoo. Between programs, WHYY airs spots designed to teach children constructive attitudes and behaviors, such as negotiating conflicts, asking for help, experimenting, completing tasks and developing confidence.

The Ready To Learn program at WHYY serves area parents, educators and caregivers by providing workshops that focus on emergent literacy, media literacy and ways in which public television programming can be a developmental tool to increase the literacy skills of children. That is, RTL workshops educate parents, adult caregivers and educators to develop the pre-reading and early literacy skills of children through educational television and companion literacy materials. A primary goal of RTL workshops is to develop children's love of learning and reading so that they will enter school "ready to learn."

WHYY offers eight different Ready To Learn workshops in Spanish and English, facilitated by trained WHYY staff members in community settings. Since the inception of Ready To Learn, WHYY has trained over 3,300 parents, educators, and childcare providers, benefiting over 30,000 children in the Delaware Valley.

For More Information on how you can support Ready To Learn in our community, please call Richelle Ogle, Manager, Foundations and Institutions, at (215) 351-2019.

91FM Program Fund

WHYY 91FM is one of the nation's leading public radio stations. A trusted source for local news, 91FM also provides acclaimed programming to National Public Radio stations across the country. Fresh Air with Terry Gross, one of NPR's most popular programs, originates here. Each week, over half a million people tune into 91FM throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware to learn about the issues affecting the region, the nation and the world. Are you one of them?

Now celebrating its 50th year on the air, WHYY 91FM looks forward to a future full of new opportunity. Digital radio is on the horizon, which will give you more channels of programming in addition to the current 91FM format you love so much. And soon you will be able to listen "on demand" to programs you select - when, where and how you want them. Multicasting technology, in use now for Radio Times and slated to expand, will allow you access to broadcast content across several distribution platforms, including radio, digital TV, analog TV, and Comcast's ON DEMAND service. Your generous support will provide the resources that WHYY needs to take full advantage of these exciting new technologies!

Join the WHYY 91FM Program Fund and be a part of the station's exciting future! For More Information on supporting the WHYY 91FM Program Fund, please call Richelle Ogle, Manager, Foundations and Institutions, at (215) 351-2019

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