I used to donate a lot. Now I dont find my local stations content to be informative or relevant to me.

I wish them the best and I hope they are successful in growing their new user base.

You can donate directly to NPR and if you consume NPR online instead of OTA you have the option to choose a different "local" station.

I donate to KQED as a sustaining member. Can someone tell me if that money goes to just KQED in SF or also to NPR?

KQED pays NPR for NPR produced shows that KQED chooses to air. So, yes NPR gets some of that money indirectly. I believe it is possible to support NPR directly via their website.

I sort of do this already with my local public broadcaster. I give to OPB but I also make a separate donation to KMHD radio because I value what they are doing. The money all ends up under the same umbrella organization but I hope the separate stream shows that their listeners value this relatively small part of the overall mission.

I see Morning Edition and All Things Considered on KQED's weekly schedule (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PrFgenUlR9TW8bZJ26LopRObTuB...). KQED pays NPR for that content.

It's a mix of both. NPR affiliates pay fees back to hq for the use of national programming based on audience size. Donations to your local station could cover local payroll, equipment, or their payments for national programming.

I started donating 50/50 to both my local affiliate and the national NPR non-profit a few years ago. I realized that about half my NPR listening was via the affiliate, and half was via NPR podcasts.

You can also support some of the podcasts directly by joining NPR+.

Americans are already forced to do so through taxation.

According to disclosures: Less than 1% of NPRs budget comes from government grants (https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance...). Other sources put it maybe as high as 4% (https://www.newsweek.com/where-does-npr-get-its-funding-call...) across all federal, state, and local funding.

so why is parent comment being downvoted, when it's a true statement?

Factual truth is required, but it is not the only part of human communication by a long shot. "It's true" is a meaningless defense of expressions (past childhood) if nobody is claiming otherwise (downvotes don't mean "I think this is a lie").

The GP leaves the degree of taxation/funding, as well as the broader context of what other entities are tax funded and to what degree, unspoken; and they imply that, whatever those facts may be, it's a bad thing in this case. The parent (and other commenters) then provided some of that relevant information (and, assuming that information is true, you presumably would appreciate such a thing).

As for the downvoters, they may reasonably disagree with the parent's implication that it is a bad thing, or disapprove of their omission of details. You may reasonably disagree with this use of the downvote button, but it means they are not necessarily claiming the GP is stating an untruth.

Because it's what you would call "misinformation."

Individual contributions to NPR are tax-deductible. That means the public IS indeed subsidizing NPR, far beyond the government's direct payments.

Just as they are also supporting the Catholic Church, Atheist organizations, Mormons, Buddhists, etc and anyone else who fulfills the basic requirements to be tax deductible.

But the reality is only ~13% of US tax payers itemize deductions so in general there isn’t any such support when the average person donates to anything. It’s really just support for the kinds of people who can itemize their taxes rather than supporting charities.

Irrelevant how many people overall itemize. The question is "how many NPR contributors itemize?"

I don't know what your point is in the first paragraph. Yes, we do "support" any 501(c)(3). Are you opposed to that?

I would personally get rid of 501(c)(3).

Anyway, a more relevant “how many NPR contributors itemize their donations.” But of course it’s roughly in line other such charity’s, because when your talking about such a wide selection of the population it tends to look like the general population. Aka, when you start talking millions there aren’t enough billionaires for the group to mostly consist of billionaires.

I had an aunt who got a 7 figure refund after an IRS audit because she wasn’t bothering with minor donations. No idea how representative that is, but people are strange especially when you look at large numbers of them.

> how many NPR contributors itemize their donations.

what's your point? Who else's can you itemize?

> when you start talking millions there aren’t enough billionaires for the group to mostly consist of billionaires

who mentioned millionaires, or billionaires? For that matter, that entire paragraph doesn't make any sense. I proposed a very simple test, which we unfortunately can't get the data for (easily).

when you watch a PBS pledge drive, they do seem to emphasize "tax-deductible" a lot when they ask for your pledge. So they must think it matters, at least.

> what's your point?

Many people who could deduct donations don’t because they don’t bother with the paperwork. It’s a very meaningful distinction because the option doesn’t inherently cost tax payers anything only those who actually use it do.

Being tax deductible on the other hand is an easy way to saying they’re a legit charity. Anything that isn’t tax deductible that still wants donations should raise major red flags.

OK, point taken. IF that's true. Where's your data on "Many people who could deduct donations don’t"?

They are not tax deductible for normal people in the last few years because nobody itemizes anymore.

The relevant percentage is not "normal people who itemize" but "NPR contributors who itemize." Do you have that number?

I don't but I think they're mostly average people. Wealthy people are too rare to matter.

Less true for art museums and things because wealthy people can get more out of their donations, like their name on stuff and cool party invitations.

"I think they're mostly average people"

that's an easily-testable hypothesis. I dispute it.

As for "Wealthy people are too rare to matter" do a search on the percentage of income taxes paid by the wealthy.

Because while it’s technically true (each American does contribute about $0.40 a year to NPR stations via federal taxes and the corporation for public broadcasting) it’s a tiny fraction of NPRs budget so the statement is misleading.

It would be similar to complaining that people are forced to pay Ford via taxes because the government uses F-150s

Because it’s true of every single non profit in the US. You can say the same about random churches, but that level of support doesn’t keep the lights on.

because, while true, it doesn't tell the whole story. There would be a lot more than 4 podcasts being cancelled if it were solely relied on money through taxes.

Being technically true but also leaving out critical information in order to mislead people is a common practice called paltering

CPB gets almost 500M/year from the federal government. 50% of CPB's budget goes to public radio stations. Budget of NPR is 300M.

I'm going to say that any claim that NPR's public financing is very low (1% or 5%) is either malicious splitting of hairs or outright lying.

If less than 4% of their funding came from the state, they wouldn't fight so hard to keep it coming. If the state contribution was that low, it would be in NPR's best interest to just get off it entirely.

Anyone who contributes $100 to NPR deducts $100 from their income for tax purposes. So the public is paying, in that he or she would have paid $40-50 in taxes on it otherwise.

So is this an argument against charitable donation to nonprofits in general? And I doubt your effective tax rate is 40-50%

Tax math: it's the marginal tax rate you have to look at for deductions, i.e. the rate you'll pay on the next dollar you earn, or save on the dollar you deduct. We don't have a flat tax at the Federal level, or most states.

We can find plenty of taxpayers in NY, CA, or MA who have a marginal rate of 40-50%. They are the highly affluent people that those PBS pledge drives featuring Baby Boomer musical acts are aimed at.

There aren't many Americans anywhere close to a 40-50% effective tax rate.

California is easily close to that, when you add up Federal and State income taxes. As is New York.

Just look at the continued campaign to remove the $10,000 limit on State and Local Taxes. Where's that coming from?

> California is easily close to that, when you add up Federal and State income taxes. As is New York.

No, it's not. Someone making $250k in California pays an effective Federal rate of 22% and state of 8%. Even someone making a million a year sees an effective rate of ~42%. (And that's before tax avoidance strategies they'll undoubtedly pursue.)

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/income-tax-calculator/califor...

Same thing for New York; $100k income nets out at a 20% effective rate. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/income-tax-calculator/new-yor...

(And these are single-filers. If you've got a family, it dips substantially further.)

> Just look at the continued campaign to remove the $10,000 limit on State and Local Taxes. Where's that coming from?

The $10k limit isn't a limit on taxes, it's on how much state/local tax paid you can deduct, set in 2017 as a way to punish high-tax blue states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Cuts_and_Jobs_Act_of_2017

> The $10k limit isn't a limit on taxes

Pedantic. Obviously that's what I meant (and knew)

Learn about marginal tax rates. See, Forbes even tells you: "your marginal tax rate is 35%"

22% is the average tax rate. It's the *marginal" tax rate we're concerned with for deductions.

> Anyone who contributes $100 to NPR deducts $100 from their income for tax purposes.

Itemized deductions these days are either extremely small (limited to a few hundred dollars) or only for the very wealthy.

During the Trump years, the standard deduction was doubled, with the result that vastly fewer people now itemize deductions. Yes, you can report a limited amount of tax-deductible donations, but last time I looked it was around $300/yr (and even that was easy to overlook).

The $300 charitable deduction was just in 2021, you basically can't get a federal charitable deduction anymore. Might get one at the state level though.

As I said elsewhere: the relevant percentage is not "how many normal people itemize?" but "how many NPR contributors itemize?"

I've heard this "debunked" many times before, but I looked it up this time for our local public radio [0]. Looking at this report for my state it looks like it's coming up on 29% government funds (state funds and CPB)! Listener and business support add up to about 50%. About 22% looks like it's basically income (proceeds on ticket sales, etc).

I'm not a total public radio hater or anything, but this definitely makes me take the idea that public radio is mostly listener supported a lot less seriously in the bigger scheme of things. Public radio fans can try to talk me down. I'd like to know where I'm wrong.

[0] https://www.wpr.org/sites/default/files/annualreport2021_fin...

Edit: ... and I do know there is a distinction between the national entity and the member stations. It's just that tracing it up further feels like a shell game. Maybe all the other states are different and have way more donations, but I have no idea. I'm already confused about how many of WPR's "in kind" funding from the UW-system are state/federal funds and even if any of the state funds are from federal aid.

Not really. It's mostly member supported.

"Presently, NPR receives funding for less than 1% of its budget directly from the federal government, but receives almost 10% of its budget from federal, state, and local governments indirectly."

https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/national-public-ra...

Search before you speak! NPR is a non-profit, not funded largely through taxes like the BBC or other state operated broadcasters.

https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance...

NPR does receive some public funding, but it only amounts to something like 2% of their overall revenue. [1] Based on a revenue of 200 million-ish, that means somewhere in the ballpark of $4 million/year, or 1-2 cents per US resident per year.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR

That's incorrect, our taxes go to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). NPR applies for and receives grants from the CPB. That distinction is important because NPR is competing with other public broadcasters for those grants.

As an FYI they also offer a bundle at https://plus.npr.org/ where one gets all the "plus versions" of the podcasts and your local station gets a percentage of that donation

Only KALW showed up for me, but I previously donated to them anyway because I prefer their programming and they were the original home of 99% Invisible for which I'll be eternally grateful

> Currently, the NPR+ bundle is only available in a select number of locations.

It's apparently not available in WI.

Oh, wow, that's absolutely terrible :-( I've never known NPR to play region locked games like that, and doubly so when turning away donations. But I guess that does explain why KQED isn't an option even out here

This audio piece explains the NPR/affiliate model pretty well. PBS is mostly the same.

Only difference is that as of a few months ago, NPR began accepting direct donations for the first time. I think they will send some of that donation to affiliates as well.