Renee Driessen and Randy Fuhrmann were eager to attend Montana Public Radio’s 60th birthday celebration at Blackfoot River Brewing Co. in Helena on Aug. 7. The Helena residents wanted to meet the people they heard on the radio every morning.
“We know that they’re under funding stress, so of course we wanted to give them a little extra support both financially and just personally,” Driessen said.
President Donald Trump’s July rescissions package created a roughly $350,000 shortfall for MTPR, about 11% of its annual operating budget. But in a recent summer pledge drive — held in response to the reduction — the station raised nearly $500,000.
In the weeks since national legislation carved a $2.8 million hole in Montana public media outlets’ budgets, organizations including MTPR have courted major donors and small-dollar giftors with new, targeted asks.
But not everywhere was prepared for a fundraising marathon. Unlike MTPR, the Fort Belknap-based station KGVA, which receives about 80% of its funding from the federal government, has found little post-rescission recourse. According to station manager, program director and sole employee Jack Jones, there’s limited opportunity for underwriting or donations from rural, northcentral Montana listeners. Jones said shutting down the station “is a possibility.”
KGVA, the only tribal station in the state that received the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Community Service Grant, faces roughly $100,000 in cuts. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting began winding down operations in August, just weeks after the rescission.
CPB’s closure made it difficult for media organizations to estimate indirect costs. In addition to passing funds on to stations directly, CPB provided outlets with music licensing rights, satellite systems and national reporting.
Montana PBS faces more than $1.8 million in cuts. In late July, the organization launched its “Bridge the Gap” campaign, with a group of major donors offering $900,000 in matching donations. By Thursday, MT PBS had received more than $100,000 in matches.
Aaron Pruitt, director of Montana PBS, said the organization is also looking for other funding. MT PBS will continue to seek foundation grants, which have been used to upgrade equipment and improve broadcast technology. The organization also receives money from Montana’s university system. In 2024, that support made up roughly 30% of the station’s revenue. Pruitt said the station is “having conversations with our university leadership for them to understand the full impact of [these cuts].”
“We have had wonderful support over all the decades from the Board of Regents, but they have their own funding challenges,” Pruitt said.
Alternative radio station KGLT’s general manager reports to Pruitt, but the station broadcasting across southwestern Montana otherwise operates separately from Montana PBS. The rescission stripped 30% of the KGLT’s budget.
Eastern Montana’s Yellowstone Public Radio faces a $300,000 shortfall, which General Manager Ken Siebert called “a big, extra fundraising lift in a very short period of time.”
“You can’t just take a fundraising system, fundraising staff, a fundraising outreach that is tuned to raise $1.2 million [the station’s annual fundraising tally] and then ask that system to raise $1.5 million in less than a year,” Siebert said.
After the rescission bill’s July passage, YPR took a new approach to contacting their 7,000-person email list of past and potential donors.
“We’re encouraging people to increase their ongoing monthly contributions. We’re encouraging the people who’ve never contributed before to become first-time donors. We’re encouraging people to make additional gifts — doing everything we can to just create an awareness forum and make sure people understand what’s at stake.”
YPR has also looked to attract more long-term donors to help “with the overall stability of the radio station.” Though YPR has already seen an uptick in donations, Siebert is wary of maintaining momentum without depleting donors.
“What we don’t want to do is end up taking money out of our fall drive because people are making gifts now and thinking to themselves, ‘Well, I’m helping.’ You certainly are helping, and we don’t want people to think that’s not the case, but we still have our regular obligations to meet as well.”
Siebert said they’ve opted to avoid grim messaging and instead kept fundraising language hopeful and grateful.
“We also want to make sure that we’re being completely honest with everybody about the need to fill this gap and that it will create some hard decisions by the time we get to [July 2026],” Siebert said.
All four Republican members of Montana’s federal delegation voted for the rescissions package.
“Senator Daines supports local public broadcasting and believes waste in the programs should be reduced so taxpayer dollars are used most effectively,” Press Secretary Gabby Wiggins wrote in an email to MTFP on Monday.
When the package passed, Rep. Troy Downing and Rep. Ryan Zinke both celebrated the rescission bill on the social media platform X, but did not provide comments to MTFP on how it is likely to impact Montana’s public media.
A spokesperson for Zinke informed MTFP on Monday that the representative’s position had not changed. Neither Downing nor Sen. Tim Sheehy replied to requests for interviews or comments this week.
At Blackfoot River Brewing Co. last week, MTPR’s Program Director Michael Marsolek bubbled with enthusiasm about the station’s future. In celebration of the station’s 60 years on air, Marsolek has been playing radio archives, including clips of Kim Williams, a Missoula-based public radio commentator active in the 70s and 80s. Marsolek said he’s heartened to see MTPR’s uptick in first-time donors, but nervous about the collateral impact of lost CPB infrastructure.
“There’s a lot of unknowns, and we just don’t know music rights and satellite distribution and other things,” Marsolek said to MTFP. “But the primary plan — and I’ve been saying this from the get-go — is we just want to continue to give that great content.”
This story originally appeared in the Montana Free Press, which can be found online at montanafreepress.org.