On December 31^st 2022 and the first week of 2023, two individuals made donations to the Sun Radio Foundation for the purpose of stealing money. The donations were fraudulent, a tactic crooks use specifically to prey on not-for-profits in fundraising mode, whereby when claiming a mistaken donation or fraud themselves, the middle processing companies between the banks will reverse the charges and push the money back to a fake account which never had funds in it to begin with.

The Sun Radio Foundation was hit with three $5,000 donations and a $25,000 donation, all on December 31^st. We engaged this individual noting it was odd, and she engaged us back. She is a resident of Central Texas and even claims to be a listener. Our bank froze our account to try and sort out the effort, but then the middle processing company stopped sending us any donations, which held up hundreds of donations until we refunded the money to them. It seems a small float exists between banks and either we would be out the money or the processor. While the San Antonio and Austin police departments were investigating this matter, and we still do not know the final result, the processor shut us down from receiving any online donations and held those until we acquiesced and allowed them to take $50,000 plus fees out of our account with the agreement that they would release several hundred small donations. This all took place in our biggest fundraising month during SXSW and the Sun Radio Sessions. The entire process went back and forth for 4 months until we finally gave up. We have since changed processing companies and installed new levels of fraud detection. In the first week of January, another $7,000 came through as fraudulent and was treated as such.

Then in February, an ice storm hit and the thaw sent pieces of ice the size of a car from our 1,400 foot tower in West Lake Hills and destroyed our brand new solar panels which had just been replaced and installed from the previous winter storm in 2021. But that’s not all: Our dish on a tower in Johnson City was shattered, the building at the original KDRP tower in Dripping Springs crushed, the building at our tower site in Luckenbach was hit so hard it knocked the air conditioner free from the building.

The Sun Radio Foundation is a 501-C3 organization and we are an independent non-commercial education radio broadcaster. We do not receive any money from the Corporation from Public Broadcasting. Our funds come from individual donations and from local business owners via underwriting sales and through event marketing like Texas Radio Live at Guero’s Taco Bar.

Your donations keep our tower sites lit, the power going, and allow us to highlight local variety in the artists we play. We are purveyors of local music, which we call “The Sound Of Our Town”, and not only featuring local artists weekly on Texas Radio Live at Guero’s Taco Bar as well as other events held throughout the year, but we actually play these artists on the radio. We believe given Austin’s growth and pure unaffordability, challenging San Francisco and other major cities in terms of housing cost, that for the first time in our history the creative culture will be forced to move from Austin.

How are we different? We are mission facing and we face the public and give back to try to keep musicians here. Since the pandemic, we have given out over $190,000 to citizens in need, most of which has gone to those in the local music field to pay their electric bills. We did that with no federal dollars. It all came from YOU.

Not one dime of our received charitable donations goes to salaries. That is why the Sun Radio Foundation has a platinum rating with GuideStar, because of how we use donations.

We do it all out of a little blue house built in 1961 in the ‘04, and its 100% solar powered.

We are going to make great radio, entertain well, and will support our local music heroes and those fighting to stay here and do this with as little harm to the earth as possible.

You see, we shouldn’t be asking for money right now. Instead, we should be cutting checks to those artists in need. So next week is your chance to say “local artists matter”, “the local station that helps others matters” and “saving the environment” matters.

We invite everyone to join us in-person at Austin Eastciders Collaboratory Taproom July 27-29 for the Sun Radiothon to make a donation, make your voice heard and enjoy some of the best live music heard anywhere!

Sun Radiothon

Help Recharge The Sun Radio Foundation!