WKDZ-106.5 FM has been helping the Rotary Club of Cadiz, Kentucky with an annual auction for more than 50 years. This year the station couldn’t hold the traditional Rotary Radio Auction where people would attend in person and place bids as well as bid via telephone to the auction that was heard on WKDZ.
Historically the auction has raised about $250,000 a year to support all of the Rotary Club programs. This year, in the midst of COVID-19 restrictions, Beth Mann, President of Ham Broadcasting, a five station, locally owned chain, based in Cadiz, was a bit concerned about the results from the mid-April event.
“Our Governor has been very firm about social distancing and gatherings of more than 10 people in any one spot. So we divided the single venue between our radio stations. So instead of 40 or 50 Rotarians at one location helping out, we had 10 or less at our stations.”
The volunteers manned the phones for a two days for the Rotary Rally on-air, taking pledges from listeners. The radio group also used their “Big Deals Store” platform on their website to take bids on about 350 items, collected before the virus restrictions.
“We start planning for this auction, getting items to sell, months ahead. So we had some items already. We didn’t want to collect more items from businesses already burdened by this, but once the word got out about this; people responded and starting going to local businesses to buy gift certificates and giving them to us to sell on-line.”
Cadiz is the county seat of Trigg County, population about 13,500 in the Western part of the Bluegrass state. At one time, according to Mann, the deals site had more than 2,600 people using it bidding on items.
“At last count and we’re still finalizing the figures, but we raised about $226,000. I don’t know if we got lucky or what. Our community stepped up to the plate and hit a grand slam! It ended up to be a win-win for everybody.”
Mann sees this as proof positive about the reach and power of radio.
“We had a whole lot of confidence in our community going into this, but we really didn’t have a big picture of the people who would be in a position to step up. We had someone step up and match the money we raised during night one of our two night event. That was a $25,000 match! Then we started the next night with a triple match. Those things really made a difference for us. I’m so proud of us and our community.”
