Iowa Public Radio has received $250,000 from the Heartland Mitzvah Fund to establish a new Innovation Fund, which will support new IPR projects over the next five years to serve existing and new audiences for state public radio.
“There’s a lot happening in the digital world,” IPR Executive Director Myrna Johnson told the Business Record. “I’m excited to be giving our staff some leeway to be creative, and to take some time to really develop some new ideas.”
The Innovation Fund is the first of its kind at IPR, Johnson said. IPR plays on three 24-hour streams: News, Classical and Studio One; the organization’s largest audience is during commuting hours, and the organization has about 220,000 listeners per week.
“There is a lot of change in how people are consuming media,” Johnson said. “We knew that we wanted to provide some resources for new ideas and to research and develop new ideas. So it was a need that was identified during [strategic planning], and we’ve just been looking for folks who can help us accomplish that.”