It appears that meeting the funding gap left by the government's recent spending cuts is getting closer to reality for Pittsburgh Community Broadcasting, which operates 90.5 WESA and 91.3 WYEP.

The company needed the community to respond.

"Sometimes, it takes a crisis to get people up off the couch," president and CEO Terry O'Reilly said.

And it appears those people did, and then some.

"It was everything from folks donating $5 or $10 to five-figure gifts," O'Reilly said.

The total came in over $500,000 from July 18 to July 25.

"It was amazing to us," O'Reilly said.

It all started just hours after Congress gave final approval to the spending cuts. By 6 p.m. on July 18, the numbers were deemed historic.

"We had had the single most successful day of fundraising in the company's 50-plus-year history," O'Reilly said.

Federal funding accounted for about 9% of WESA and WYEP's annual budget.

"We're lucky that we don't depend on it quite that much," O'Reilly said. "The vast majority of our revenue comes from local individuals and institutions."

Still, the stations are set to lose about $700,000 in federal funding.

"The most encouraging thing to us was the extraordinary number of people who had never given to us before," O'Reilly said.

O'Reilly says it's a big deal.

"It buys us some time to be able to invest in being more independent than we've ever been before," he said.

O'Reilly says part of that means also growing WESA's newsroom. It's important after what he calls an extraordinary statement from those who listen.

"What was pretty clear at the end of that first day was that Pittsburgh felt very strongly about the things that we do," O'Reilly said.

Meanwhile, the CEO of WQED, Jason Jedlinski, says it saw its gift number triple last week.

He says they are grateful for that, but still cautions that things like PBS's local-to-national infrastructure, children's programming, and even music licenses are in jeopardy as a result of the federal cuts.

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• Pittsburgh