A tsunami of radio fundraisers

I don't think www.insideradio.com's Tom Taylor will mind if I reprint this (it's for a great cause):

Radio’s creating its own tsunami of fundraisers. Here are some ideas you could steal (or adapt).

For example: Dress Down for Disaster Relief Day. KEZK, St. Louis asks businesses to let staffers come to work in casual dress, in exchange for a Red Cross donation (suggested to be $10.25, for the station frequency). Details at KEZK.com.

Then there’s Turn the station over to tsunami donors. That’s what WXRT, Chicago’s doing 9am-5pm on Friday. They’ll play song requests for a minimum donation of $100.
(More at 93XRT.com)

Another idea may not be for everybody but it’s getting popular - send your personality
to Asia.

WOAI, San Antonio PM driver Jeff Bolton hitches a ride on an Air Force C-5 out of nearby Lackland AFB to deliver supplies.

Syndicated host John Tesh got the same itch ¡ª he and his family (including wife Connie Sellecca) are flying to India and then trekking to Sri Lanka. The Tesh trip is under the
auspices of Operation Blessing (OperationBlessing.org ).

And we like what ABC’s doing at its L.A. cluster - making a one-year commitment (at minimum ) to relief efforts because the need is ongoing.

Non-coms can get special FCC permission to do tsunami fundraisers. Non-commercial stations actually have restrictions on their fundraising campaigns (for their own operations, mostly). But the FCC allowed them to do charity fundraising immediately after 9/11. And now Christian Community Broadcasters’ John Broomall reports to Inside Radio that the FCC Media Bureau says it’s amenable to granting short-term waiver requests. Stations can e-mail Michael Wagner (at Michael.Wagner@fcc.gov ), but they must provide the specifics, like how long the fundraising will last, what happens to the funds, and whether the campaign’s part of a regularly-scheduled pledge drive.

PS: as long as I'm plugging the great work that Tom and the entire Inside Radio/M Street Journal crew do, here's where you can keep track of station format changes: http://www.mstreet.net/formatcounts.asp