The HBCU Radio Preservation Project says $750,000 from the Ford Foundation has helped support 14 stations serving historically Black colleges and universities.
The project distributed unrestricted budget support through a noncompetitive, formula-based grant process. Its newsletter identifies uses including staffing, programming, broadcast and digital infrastructure, carrier fees and other operating gaps.
Ongoing support, not a newly opened competition
Radio World reported on the funding October 19. The project’s own newsletter says the money has been used over the past year, so the report should not be read as an announcement of a new public application window.
Support also includes travel stipends for station personnel attending the project’s November symposium in Baltimore, Maryland.
Flexible funding can address the ordinary expenses that keep a station broadcasting while preservation work protects its history. The project also describes audio-collection assessments, reformatting and long-term preservation planning through the Northeast Document Conservation Center.
The next accountability questions concern what individual stations preserved with the funding and how those operations will be sustained after the support ends.
Sources: Project announcement and project newsletter.