With a return to Win­nipeg’s air­waves in 1998, UMFM has been pro­vid­ing a diverse range of music, talk and spe­cial­ty pro­gram­ming to Win­nipeg. As with any orga­ni­za­tion, we have changed and evolved over the years but at its core, UMFM main­tains a man­date to pro­vide our lis­ten­ers with a forum for music and voic­es that oth­er­wise go unheard.

Since 1998, our oper­at­ing bud­get has con­sist­ed most­ly of stu­dent fees and ad rev­enue. While times have changed, fund­ing from the stu­dent fees has stayed pret­ty sta­t­ic, ad rev­enue has decreased con­sid­er­ably, and the cost of run­ning a com­mu­ni­ty radio sta­tion has steadi­ly con­tin­ued to rise. While we are con­stant­ly explor­ing alter­na­tive rev­enue streams that allow us to main­tain our dai­ly oper­a­tion costs and under­take nec­es­sary larg­er cap­i­tal projects that allow us to grow for the future, we rely on the funds raised dur­ing Pledge-O-Rama to help us make our goals a reality.

We’re rais­ing funds for our eighth con­sec­u­tive year, hope­ful that it will con­tin­ue to bring us all a lit­tle clos­er to this great com­mu­ni­ty that we all know and love so much!. Pledge-O-Rama 2019 runs from Octo­ber 18^th, start­ing at 6:30 PM (start­ing with Thank God It’s Free Range) and ends on Octo­ber 25^th at 8 PM, cul­mi­nat­ing with Thank God It’s Free Range, where it all began a week earlier!

With Pledge-O-Rama now in year 8, once again we ask you, our loy­al lis­ten­ing audi­ence, for finan­cial sup­port — we know that you love UMFM’s pro­gram­ming and per­son­al­i­ties and that you under­stand how valu­able inde­pen­dent cam­pus and com­mu­ni­ty radio is in this day and age! 

In case you need­ed so addi­tion­al con­vinc­ing, here’s a few more key rea­sons why:

This year, 100% of funds raised dur­ing Pledge-O-Rama will go towards a major project that we’ve iden­ti­fied as our main pri­or­i­ty: replac­ing our broad­cast antenna! 

• We are replac­ing our anten­na for a cou­ple of pri­ma­ry rea­sons – first, the cur­rent anten­na is more than 20 years old and is start­ing to show a lit­tle wear and tear. Addi­tion­al­ly, before we renew our cur­rent radio license in 2021, we need to become com­pli­ant with some new safe­ty reg­u­la­tions regard­ing human expo­sure to radiofre­quen­cy (RF) elec­tro­mag­net­ic fields that are now in place for all broad­cast­ing anten­nae, includ­ing ours atop the Richard­son Build­ing. By replac­ing the anten­na, sim­i­lar to how we did with our trans­mit­ter a cou­ple of years ago, we will main­tain our com­pli­ance with all safe­ty codes and will hope­ful­ly see key improve­ments in our sig­nal and broad­cast range — we see it as a huge win all around!

• We need to stress that this will not increase our wattage from it’s cur­rent 1200 watts, but if we do not make the changes nec­es­sary, it may mean that we have to turn down the antenna’s pow­er for longer peri­ods of time, per­haps even per­ma­nent­ly, in order to main­tain safe radio-fre­quen­cy (RF) elec­tro­mag­net­ic lev­els. Replac­ing our anten­na is not work that we take light­ly, but the process is a cost­ly endeav­or that involves engi­neer­ing inspec­tions, struc­tur­al analy­sis, pur­chase and instal­la­tion of the com­po­nents, not to men­tion all of the test­ing that will come afterwards.

We are 100% con­fi­dent that meet­ing, and hope­ful­ly sur­pass­ing, our Pledge goal in 2019 would mean that we could tack­le this project head on! Keep in mind, we run a pret­ty tight ship at UMFM when it comes to spend­ing, so rest assured any extra funds left over are always put to good use!

• Our lis­ten­ers pro­vide the roadmap for our future. With the cost of run­ning a radio sta­tion con­sis­tent­ly on the rise we rely on friends of UMFM, like you, for sup­port in help­ing us con­tin­ue to bring you the best qual­i­ty pro­gram­ming for years to come.

• Past Pledge-O-Rama suc­cess has allowed us to replace our trans­mit­ter, pur­chase field record­ing and remote broad­cast­ing equip­ment, main­tain all of our major broad­cast gear, main­tain and upgrade our live record­ing stu­dio, replace and upgrade com­put­ers that are essen­tial to our oper­a­tion and build this beau­ti­ful web­site you are read­ing right now. It also goes towards every­day inci­den­tals such as mics, cables, head­phones, turntable main­te­nance and nee­dles. Final­ly, lis­ten­er sup­port dur­ing Pledge-O-Rama also helps pay fixed costs like radio tow­er rent, net­work main­te­nance and utilities.
  

• The main point here is that fundrais­ing is NOT a choice for the sta­tion, it’s a NECES­SI­TY. We take this seri­ous­ly and your gen­er­ous dona­tions go a long way towards improv­ing ser­vice that UMFM pro­vides not only to our cam­pus, but also this beau­ti­ful com­mu­ni­ty that we live in!

• We broad­cast a wide array of music, from indie rock to jazz, funk to folk, loud to hip-hop and every­thing in between, not to men­tion our sports cov­er­age and great spo­ken word pro­gram­ming. UMFM dis­trib­utes a wide assort­ment of sounds and infor­ma­tion to its lis­ten­ers and offers a ​‘hit-free’ alter­na­tive to reg­u­lar radio with a focus on local and nation­al artists and affairs.
• Along with our on-air pro­gram­ming, UMFM has always done its best to sup­port the arts in our com­mu­ni­ty. From spon­sor­ing the city’s amaz­ing music and arts fes­ti­vals, to help­ing local bands with pro­mo­tion, UMFM has been a strong pres­ence in Winnipeg’s music and arts scene since its inception.
• UMFM boasts a state-of-the-art record­ing and pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty that has record­ed some amaz­ing ses­sions. Our live band room has giv­en UMFM the abil­i­ty to sup­port local tal­ent and give them a venue to record their first demo, live ses­sion on UMFM, or per­form live to air.
• UMFM is a strong sup­port­er of stu­dent groups across cam­pus, and com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions across the city. We’ve nev­er hes­i­tat­ed in air­ing their Pub­lic Ser­vice Announce­ments and have always giv­en inter­est­ed stu­dent groups time slots on our air­waves and the resources to pro­gram and run their own shows.
• In return for pro­vid­ing these ser­vices, we are reach­ing out now to our loy­al lis­ten­ers, our friends and our fam­i­ly. Maybe some of you have won tick­ets or prizes on one of our shows. Maybe you’ve phoned in and had your request played or have been inter­viewed and expressed your opin­ion on air. Or maybe you’ve attend­ed some of the events that we’ve spon­sored or you’ve been turned onto some amaz­ing new music by one of our many shows! 
  

What­ev­er the case, now is the time to show us your sup­port by call­ing in and pledg­ing to UMFM, a sta­tion that’s as big a part of your life as it is ours!

Plain­ly stat­ed, dur­ing Pledge-O-Rama 2019, our goal is to raise is $36,000. Start­ing at 6:30PM on Octo­ber 18^th and run­ning through to 8PM on Octo­ber 25^th, our hard­work­ing show hosts and vol­un­teers will be hit­ting the air­waves and tak­ing your calls in in an effort to reach our goal. $36,000 isn’t an arbi­trary num­ber to us, it rep­re­sents rough­ly 15% of our oper­at­ing bud­get goes a long way in assist­ing with the day to day main­te­nance and oper­a­tion of UMFM. After Pledge-O-Rama kicks off, we’ll be answer­ing those phones dai­ly from 6AM until 3AM. How­ev­er, if you miss dur­ing our prime pledge hours, you can just leave us a mes­sage at 204−474−6610 or drop us a line at [email protected]​umfm.​com and one of our Smooth Phone Oper­a­tors will get back to you ASAP! Or if you want to come down to the sta­tion dur­ing Pledge-O-Rama to pledge your sup­port in per­son, we’d love to see you. 

Obvi­ous­ly no dona­tion is too small or too large, we’re grate­ful for all of your sup­port. Our aim is to make pledg­ing to UMFM as pain free a process as pos­si­ble, so we’re offer­ing you a num­ber of dif­fer­ent pay­ment options and pay­ment plans to pay your pledge. Your Pledges can be made over the phone (204−474−6610), in per­son (Room 310, Uni­ver­si­ty Cen­tre) or online. You can pay in one lump sum, or you can choose to pay month­ly, quar­ter­ly, semi-annu­al­ly or in what­ev­er oth­er con­fig­u­ra­tion that works for you, it’s just that easy. Pledges may be paid by in per­son at UMFM Head­quar­ters, Room 310 Uni­ver­si­ty Cen­tre, Mon­day through Fri­day from 10AM until 5:30PM. We’re hap­py to accept the fol­low­ing forms of payment:

• Cash
• Cheque or Mon­ey Order **(Made Payable To ​“UMSU Endow­ment Fund” if request­ing a tax receipt; write ​“For Dona­tion to UMFM in Memo Field”)**
• Visa or MasterCard
• Pre-Autho­rized Cred­it Card Pay­ments based on your pre­ferred schedule
• Pay­pal

Please note that we can only accept in per­son pay­ments dur­ing reg­u­lar office hours, 10 am to 5:30 pm, Mon­day thru Fri­day. If you want to ensure that we can accom­mo­date you, you can always phone ahead at 204−474−7027!

Now obvi­ous­ly, the biggest incen­tive of all that any pledgee can receive is know­ing that your are sup­port­ing the qual­i­ty, com­mu­ni­ty-sup­port­ed pro­gram­ming that UMFM pro­vides on a dai­ly basis. How­ev­er, we’d like to thank all of our lis­ten­ers who pledge, and will be offer­ing some great incen­tives, includ­ing your choice of of some lim­it­ed edi­tion UMFM mer­chan­dise or a tax deductible receipt. Learn more on our incen­tives page.

$75 - every­one who donates at this lev­el or above gets an entry into a draw for a dai­ly Half Pints prize pack and also into the grand prize draw for a pri­vate brew­ery tour & tast­ing for you and up to 20 friends after which you’ll leave with a gift cer­tifi­cate good for a keg of your choice!

$101.50 - every­one who donates at this lev­el or above gets an entry into a draw for one of three week­end pass­es to the 2020 Real Love Sum­mer­fest, tak­ing place from July 27^th thru the 28^th in Teu­lon, Man­i­to­ba! Plus one lucky win­ner will win a pass­es to both the 2020 Real Love Sum­mer­fest and the 2019 Rain­bow Trout Music Fes­ti­val, com­plete with camp­ing!

$150 - every­one who donates at this lev­el or above gets one entry into our now famous gold­en tick­et con­test — par­tic­i­pat­ing venues this year include The Park The­atre, The West End Cul­tur­al Cen­tre, The Pyra­mid Cabaret, The Good Will Social Club, The Hand­some Daugh­ter, The Gar­rick, Jazz Win­nipeg, and The Win­nipeg Folk Fes­ti­val!

$250 - every­one who donates at this lev­el or above gets three entries into our now famous gold­en tick­et con­test — par­tic­i­pat­ing venues this year include The Park The­atre, The West End Cul­tur­al Cen­tre, The Pyra­mid Cabaret, The Good Will Social Club, The Hand­some Daugh­ter, The Gar­rick, Jazz Win­nipeg, and The Win­nipeg Folk Fes­ti­val!