Well this last year was a busy time here at Recovery Radio. We had over 600,000 logins to our website and provided audio files that were played over 875,000 times this past year. We added many new speakers and workshops and now have a database of over 1600 audio files comprising more than 100 Gigabytes of data stored online for your use and enjoyment. And use it you are! We are currently serving over 500 Gigabits of bandwidth per month providing these files to the recovery community.
We have users from all around the world logging in to Recovery Radio. Our traffic comes from every continent except Antarctica.
Since our mission here at the Recovery Radio Network has expanded and become more popular, our expenses have risen as well. Because of the popularity of our Podcasts, we have increased the amounts of Internet Bandwidth we are using to the point where our provider felt it necessary to raise our costs just to defray the additional expenses he was incurring., As the result of these increased prices our expenses are starting to exceed our comfort level so something will need to change.
The idea for the Recovery Radio Network was hatched in 2002 when Internet Broadcasting was relatively new. The idea that we could make the huge library of recovery experience widely available relatively cheaply was very appealing. It took about two years of research and development before we were ready to proceed.. This was before podcasting was a stable platform so, we signed on with the Radio 365 network to provide streaming audio broadcasts and went live in February 2004.. This worked well for a number of years The Live 365 network was the largest Internet Broadcaster in the world at that time, hosting over 14,000 stations worldwide, and Recovery Radio was ranked in the top 10% of all stations by number of listeners.The growth was good but it began to cost us additional fees as our bandwidth and server usage increased, We began to look around for more cost effective alternatives when we discovered podcasting. It proved to be precisely what we needed. It was cost effective and allowed us to use distribution channels that were unavailable to streaming audio broadcasters thereby boosting our accessibility to our audience,So in May of 2009 we signed up with Podcastpeople.com as our platform provider and began our first podcast.
We have been successfully using the Podcastpeople.com platform for the last six years and have seen our traffic grow every year. This year we are on track to provide more than 1,000,000 hours of recovery audio to people on five continents. As you might imagine, this level of success comes with a price. That 1,000,000 hours of audio translates into a lot of Internet bandwidth and a very large server farm. Podcastpeople.com has generously agreed to cover over $3,000.00 of unexpected usage out of their own pockets this year because, they believe in and support our mission. However there will be an additional financial shortfall totaling approximately $5,000.00 that will need to be covered for us to continue.
This is where you come in. We need your financial support to help us grow our mission and continue the work we have been doing for the last 11 years. We have started a fundraising campaign on youcaring and ask for your help in reaching our goals. .Recovery Radio is a fully accredited 501(C)3 nonprofit charity recognized by the IRS so, all donations are tax deductible. Please help us become part of the solution supporting people suffering from Alcoholism, Addiction, and the people who love them. As Marty D. used to say “Give until it feels good!” Please use the “Donate Now” link on the right side of this page to make your tax deductible donation. And please give your friends both in,and out of the recovery community,the opportunity to participate in the solution by passing this information along to them as well.
Thank you for your time and your support!
Your Friends in Service
Recovery Radio