Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio (VCRa­dio) is a non-com­mer­cial, non-prof­it pub­lic radio ser­vice with music licensed for lis­ten­ers in the USA, Cana­da and the UK plus addi­tion­al ter­ri­to­ries, and unique spo­ken-word pro­gram­ming, aimed at lis­ten­ers in vir­tu­al worlds and on the wider inter­net. The sta­tion is fund­ed by lis­ten­ers’ gen­er­ous dona­tions and by spon­sor­ship. VCRa­dio offers spon­sor­ship to indi­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es who would like to sup­port our efforts in bring­ing our eclec­tic vari­ety of music and pro­gram­ming to a wider audi­ence, and help off­set the sig­nif­i­cant month­ly costs of run­ning the station.

We would be pleased to wel­come you as a sponsor.

In our thanks for your spon­sor­ship, we will recog­nise your sup­port with an on-air spon­sor mes­sage aired fre­quent­ly, very much in the same style as you might find on Nation­al Pub­lic Radio in the Unit­ed States. In addi­tion to your announce­ment, you will be list­ed on this web site at vcradio.org, with a logo if avail­able, and a direct link to your web or social media site or in-world/­mar­ket­place loca­tion. In addi­tion, you will receive a spe­cial newslet­ter with infor­ma­tion on our upcom­ing plans in advance of pub­lic announcements.

Write to us at info@vcradio.org for more details, or IM or give a note­card to “Vir­tu­al­Com­mu­ni­tyRa­dio Res­i­dent” in Sec­ond Life and we will be in touch to set you up as a spon­sor as soon as we can. You can also start the process man­u­al­ly: vis­it the Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio HQ on the Not­thund region in Sec­ond Life and fol­low the instruc­tions to become a spon­sor that are post­ed on the wall in our Friends & Spon­sors area.  In-world spon­sor­ships are paid using famil­iar rental machine tech­nol­o­gy and you will auto­mat­i­cal­ly receive renew­al notices, albeit some­times rather surly ones!

Sponsorship Types

• We are cur­rent­ly offer­ing a sin­gle lev­el of spon­sor­ship. This costs L$5,000 or US$20* per four-week peri­od. In return for your sup­port, you will receive a 300x300px graph­ic pan­el dis­played in rota­tion on the web site, with a link to your URL or in-world loca­tion (SLURL), a text link, and a fre­quent­ly-aired on-air mes­sage (see below).
  *We do not cur­rent­ly have the facil­i­ties to receive pay­ment for spon­sor­ship in real-world cur­ren­cy, but you can make one-off sim­ple dona­tions from the Pay­Pal link at the right of the web page.
• Rec­i­p­ro­cal spon­sor­ships. If you have some­thing to offer Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio, such as ongo­ing pro­gramme con­tent, or if you oper­ate a media out­let where you can pro­mote the sta­tion, for exam­ple in an adver­tise­ment, we may be able to arrange a rec­i­p­ro­cal spon­sor­ship arrange­ment, where we give you a spon­sor­ship in return for your sup­port in your own media out­let — such as an ad in a TV show or blog. These arrange­ments are by indi­vid­ual agree­ment and you should get in touch with us via email in the first instance, indi­cat­ing what you have to offer.

Your sponsorship messaging

We’ll help you craft your announce­ment to be both effec­tive and in keep­ing with non-com­mer­cial radio prac­tice.  It will be pro­fes­sion­al­ly read and record­ed by sta­tion announc­ers, and may include up to approx­i­mate­ly 24 words after the name of the spon­sor. For example:

• “Pro­gram­ming on Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio is brought to you in part by Design­ing Worlds, the award-win­ning week­ly web TV show on design and design­ers in vir­tu­al worlds. See the lat­est episodes at design­ing­worlds dot word­press dot com.” (21 words after the spon­sor name)

Spon­sor mes­sages begin with a pre­am­ble that may vary slight­ly from mes­sage to mes­sage, of the form, “Today’s pro­gram­ming on Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio is made pos­si­ble in part by” fol­lowed by the name of the spon­sor. Spon­sor mes­sages may con­tain SL loca­tion infor­ma­tion, names of con­tacts to IM, web site address­es or loca­tions, and can con­tain a well-estab­lished slo­gan or cor­po­rate posi­tion­ing state­ment, but they should pro­vide infor­ma­tion as opposed to being a sales-based call to action.

In the first instance, please let us know the infor­ma­tion you would like to be includ­ed in your spon­sor mes­sage. We’ll refine it and pro­pose final word­ing, and when you are hap­py with the con­tent, we will record it and include it in our broad­cast stream. In addi­tion to our sus­tain­ing ser­vice that runs 24/7, we’ll include your mes­sage in our spe­cial “genre days” where we fea­ture a spe­cif­ic type of music. Please also be sure to email info@vcradio.org with a 300x300px or 512x512px image to be dis­played on the web site, and any URL or SLURL that should be attached to it.

Donations

We are always hap­py to receive dona­tions. If you are attend­ing a Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio event, such as in the VCR The­atre, there will usu­al­ly be a tip-jar avail­able. Alter­na­tive­ly, if you like what you’re hear­ing while you’re in-world, sim­ply make a pay­ment to “Vir­tu­al­Com­mu­ni­tyRa­dio Res­i­dent” in Sec­ond Life and we will be most grate­ful for your sup­port! You can also become a Friend or a Patron of the sta­tion if you don’t own a busi­ness or there is anoth­er rea­son why spon­sor ben­e­fits would not be appropriate.