PLEDGE: The Public Radio Fund Drive: How engineering the ask, compelling the give and enticing the stay gets public radio through its day.

I got the idea for PLEDGE because I was annoyed by pledge drives I'd been hearing since the mid 90s, and I decided I wanted to rant about them. But I quickly realized that public radio is in a terrible spot between money and mission. Going deeper, I learned of things affecting the genre that most people never consider as they listen to their regular shows for days, weeks, months and years on end.

They include hunts for the ultimate content sharing technology, public radio's struggles to not...