BANGOR/PORTLAND/LEWISTON — Building on the excitement of MPBN’s previous Super Thursday One-Day Radio Pledge drives, the statewide network launched another single day fund-raising effort on Aug. 1.

The pledge drive’s goal was to raise $225,000 in total pledges and the drive outperformed expectations over only 18 hours of fundraising. In total, 427 new members joined MPBN’s membership base and 2,054 pledges were made totaling $227,760 in pledges secured.

“We are truly appreciative to receive such support. Our listeners across the state and the nation recognize the value of all the outstanding MPBN and NPR programming we broadcast each day,” said MPBN’s president and CEO, Mark Vogelzang. “We all worked together to raise the essential revenue to keep MPBN going and we did it in as short a period of time as possible. One day of fundraising and then back to our usual programming the following day.”

The “Super Thursday” format taps into MPBN’s listeners’ enthusiasm to keep the programs interruption-free as much as possible over a single day of pledge. This is MPBN’s sixth Super Thursday Pledge Drive. Volunteers and MPBN employees manned MPBN’s pledge hotlines in both the Bangor and Portland MPBN locations and MPBN.NET received a high volume of pledges throughout the day.

Pam Smart, MPBN’s director of membership, noted “We have incredibly loyal members who contributed to this pledge and we gained a significant number of new members as well. Once again we heard from listeners from every corner of Maine and across New England telling us how much they appreciate and depend on MPBN and MPBN Radio. We are very thankful for this strong showing of support.”