Help Keep The Longwave Home On the Air
Our First Annual Fund Raising Campaign 2026-27
Radio is a verb, not a noun.
That simple idea has been at the heart of The Longwave Home from the beginning.
The Longwave Home is a community-based radio programme built around storytelling, music, conversation, original performance, new voices, and ideas worth spending some time with. We explore the things that interest us, challenge us, amuse us, concern us, and occasionally leave us scratching our heads.
Most importantly, we make radio with people, not simply for them.
We live in an extraordinary technological age. We embrace that technology. In fact, The Longwave Home couldn’t exist without it.
But increasingly, the media we encounter is selected for us by algorithms designed to predict what will keep us watching, clicking, scrolling, and coming back for more.
We wanted to try something different.
The Longwave Home is human-curated media in an algorithmically curated world.
Human beings decide what stories are worth telling. Human beings choose the music. Human beings ask the questions. We seek out new voices and new talent. We invite members of our community to participate. And we explore subjects not because an algorithm predicts they will generate engagement, but because somebody around here thought, That’s interesting. Let’s talk about it.
For the first year, our family made the decision to fund this experiment ourselves.
We invested more than $50,000 out of pocket to build the infrastructure necessary to create The Longwave Home: computers, microphones, recording equipment, studio infrastructure, production tools, promotion, and the many other pieces required to turn an idea into an actual radio programme.
And we did it.
We produced and broadcast an entire first season.
Along the way, something else happened:
people started finding us.
Without a large advertising campaign or corporate machinery behind us, our audience has grown organically. People have listened, shared the programme, participated, contributed ideas, appeared on the air, and helped The Longwave Home become something larger than the family project that started it.
So now we’d like to make Season Two.
That’s where we could use some help.
The environment surrounding independent arts, cultural programming, and public media has changed significantly during the past year. Funding has been reduced or eliminated in many places, including major reductions in federal support for public broadcasting and arts and cultural programs. At the same time, the ordinary costs of producing independent work haven’t disappeared.
Neither have ours.
Operating The Longwave Home costs approximately $25,000 a year. That includes studio expenses, equipment costs, web and broadcast hosting, production services, utilities, promotion, and the other expenses required to produce and distribute the programme.
Our family has been willing to carry those costs because we believe in what we’re building.
We simply cannot sustainably carry all of them alone.
So we’re trying something new.
We’re asking the community to help us make Season Two possible.
We’re not asking you to help us start The Longwave Home. We already did that.
We’re asking you to help us keep it going.
And supporting The Longwave Home doesn’t begin or end with money.
The programme will remain available to everyone. You don’t have to contribute financially to belong here. Listen to the programme. Share an episode with somebody. Tell a friend. Send us an idea. Participate. Introduce us to an artist, musician, writer, storyteller, thinker, oddball, or interesting human being we ought to know.
And if you’re able to contribute financially, your support will help us keep the microphones on, the studio operating, and The Longwave Home growing through another season.
We built something.
It works.
People are finding it.
And we’d very much like to find out what happens next.