About 65 people sipped beer and crowded around a table full of pizza at Haines Brewing Company on Monday as members of the KHNS staff and board updated them on the past year’s activities and what’s in store for the next.
On the fundraising and membership side, development director Dawn Drotos told the crowd that the station – which covers Haines, Klukwan and Skagway – had 423 households purchase memberships over the past year, which translates to about 1,059 people.
“A little bit down from last year,” she said.
The majority, 271 households, are in Haines. Sixty-one are in Skagway, and another 91 are outside of either town.
The station set a record high during its summer fund drive, pulling in $91,538, according to Drotos. They also pulled in about $3,500 from the Cowboy Ball, $900 from a burlesque show and about $60,000 in underwriting over the last fiscal year.
“It helps us bridge some of these gaps and lost funding from the state,” she said.
The station has also brought in two big grants that will help in the future. Program director Marley Horner secured a FEMA grant for $90,000 which will go toward new transmission equipment and moving the site of the transmitter in Skagway.
The station has also been selected for a local reporting position through the new statewide public media collaboration The Alaska Desk. That funding will help the station staff two reporting positions again.
Board president Russ Lyman told the crowd that the station was in the early stages of considering whether to join the nonprofit CoastAlaska.
CoastAlaska, which has been around since the mid-1990s, provides fundraising support and financial management; it also helps with engineering services and has a regional news editor who helps with training and editorial support at member stations.
That sparked a lot of questions from audience members who remember the controversy around a decades-old decision not to join the regional collaboration.
General manager Kyle Clayton and Lyman stressed that they were in the early stages of considering whether the relationship would be good for the station.
“What are the benefits?” he said. “Maybe there aren’t any.”
Clayton said one perk of joining would be access to a $1.6 million reserve fund that CoastAlaska has to help make sure its member stations don’t fail.
Members also voted two new members onto the station’s board of directors. They are Mike Denker, of Haines, and Bill Glude, of Skagway.