Hello everyone and welcome to the shiny new Public Media Tessitura Community!
Although I have met many of you, my name is Leah Schier - I am the Director of Business Intelligence at KERA and have volunteered to chair this new community. I started at my first Tessitura licensee in 2009 and have been crazy enough to bring KERA through implementation and go live in the spring of 2019. KERA is so pleased to see public media stations join the Tessitura Network and hope to see more soon.
As we plan for future meetings, we would love to hear from you about the types of gatherings you prefer. For example, would you prefer casual discussions, formal presentations, panel style Q & A discussions, etc. Please reply and tell us what goals/expectations you have with this group, which topics you would like to discuss in the future, and please feel free to introduce yourself.
Please save the date for our next informal gathering on Friday, January 8th and invite your co-workers to join the community.
On behalf of my co-chairs Tamara and Andrea, thank you for joining us in this digital space - we are looking forward to getting to know you all better in the coming months!
Leah
I also share in the joy of having a public media community on the network. Having worked in both a science museum and now public media, I find unique use cases on a continual basis and am eager to learn from other public media stations on how you're using Tessitura to better your processes (and fundraising, which is my area of focus!)
My name is Katie Powell, and I am the Manager of Member Communications at KERA. We are a triple license station: PBS, NPR, AAA radio. I manage the direct mail program and manage two people who execute digital fundraising efforts and acknowledgements, matching gifts and vehicle donation correspondence. My Tessitura expertise ranges from the contribution side of Tessitura to lists and extractions, and I've recently dipped my toes into Analytics. I am based in Dallas, TX and "B.C." (before COVID) was an active participant in the Dallas-Fort Worth Tessitura Community (nee "TUG35"). I'm married to my sweetheart Michael of 30 years, we have a 17yo son Judah who is a senior in HS in quite possibly the weirdest year ever, and we have 3 dogs: Dixie, Beau and Belle -- the latter two being accidental acquisitions (failed foster). I'm an ardent bibliophile who has more books than years left to read them, pandemic artisan sourdough and Italian cake baker, pub trivia enthusiast, prohibition-era cocktail imbiber, Crew & Wrestling teams parent, knitter of mostly unfinished projects and volunteer at various organizations around town that specialize in food insecurity or children's services.
My preference is panel style Q&A discussions, but I also like topic-driven presentations. I also love Open Space. One of the reasons I'm most excited about having a public media forum is because I think we have a few truly unique issues that differ from arts organizations and it has been a little bit challenging finding a Tessitura tribe that deals with some of the specific challenges we face in the realm of sustainers, external call center, and the fact that we give our product away for free and then invite people to provide their support. I'd also love to share analytics other public media stations might be using to track your direct mail campaign performance and membership moves management.