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Michael Hemphill

Buzz4Good! voted Gold for Best Local Podcast in RoanokeR Magazine 819 1024 Michael Hemphill

Buzz4Good! voted Gold for Best Local Podcast in RoanokeR Magazine

I am buzzing by the news that The Roanoker Magazine has awarded Gold to Buzz4Good! for Best Local Podcast in its Best of Roanoke 2026!

Thank you to all who took the time to vote for our show! I’m grateful to my friends at WFIR who first invited me in 2022 to start the show, which you can listen to each Saturday 4p ET or at buzz4good.com/podcast.

In each episode I chat with the inspiring people who lead nonprofits not only in Southwest Virginia but around the U.S. who work tirelessly each day to make our communities even better places to live. You are all gold to me!

BUZZ receives grant from 100+ Women Who Care of the New River Valley 1024 768 Michael Hemphill

BUZZ receives grant from 100+ Women Who Care of the New River Valley

We’re buzzing to announce that 100+ Women Who Care of the New River Valley has awarded us a grant to fund production of a new episode starring Calfee Community & Cultural Center!

This is our second BUZZ made possible by 100+ WWCNRV. Thanks to the group’s generosity, in 2023 we highlighted and helped Literacy NRV on our show, which remains one of our favorite episodes. We look forward to sharing Calfee’s inspiring story this summer on Blue Ridge PBS!

About Calfee:
From 1894 to 1966, the Calfee Training School educated African American children in Pulaski, VA. Faced with severe underfunding from Jim Crow segregation, the Calfee Training School became a community, helping children and their families reach their full potential. The Calfee Community & Cultural Center is revitalizing the positive aspects of this legacy by supporting all of Pulaski County’s children, families, and organizations, building a stronger future for the region.

About 100+ Women Who Care of the New River Valley:
Members come from all walks of life and varying financial backgrounds who are dedicated to supporting local community in the New River Valley: “As individuals, it is challenging to make a meaningful impact in our community, but, as a group, we have the ability to contribute to the growth of our community in ways that we never thought possible!”

Please join us in thanking these amazing women!

Listen to BUZZ origin story from creator Michael Hemphill 900 879 Michael Hemphill

Listen to BUZZ origin story from creator Michael Hemphill

Listen to Michael Hemphill’s origin story about how and why he created Buzz4Good on the all new public radio show Naturally Curious, hosted by Bruce C. Bryan.

LISTEN HERE

About the episode:

Imagine being able to combine all of your professional passions into one work. When you hear Michael Hemphill’s story, you quickly realize that if the pieces can fit together so nicely for him, they can for you as well. Michael is a former award-winning newspaper reporter and when he chose to switch to nonprofit work, after years of helping individual nonprofit organizations, he had a bigger idea. 

Michael wanted to match an organization doing good work with a marketing firm, which could help him get more…buzz. This is a story of a passion filled man who had a wild idea. He didn’t just dream it.

But found a way to make it happen. In turn, he has helped hundreds of nonprofits and tens of thousands of people. I’ve long believed that interviewing interviewers makes for an incredible show. Above is the FULL UNEDITED version.  BUZZ4GOOD’s Michael Hemphill.

BUZZing about Franklin County NAACP’s “Raising the Shade” 900 506 Michael Hemphill

BUZZing about Franklin County NAACP’s “Raising the Shade”

Since January 2025, we’ve buzzed with the Franklin County (Va.) NAACP as it has shared the story of the county’s 70 African American men who fought for the Union in the Civil War in the United States Colored Troops.

On Sunday, Jan. 18, 2026, at 3:00 pm ET, the NAACP’s work culminates with an Official Monument Unveiling Ceremony at First Baptist Church of Rocky Mount. A reception follows at the Harvester Center. The event is free and open to the public.

MORE INFORMATION HERE

While thousands of Confederate monuments dot the U.S., fewer than 25 exist honoring the 200,000 Black men who fought in the United States Colored Troops. With support from Virginia Tech’s Monuments Across Appalachian Virginia, funded by the Mellon Foundation, the NAACP has “raised the shade” on this untold history, the climax of which is a statue sculpted by famed artists Rick Weaver and Paul DiPasquale.

We look forward to filming the event for an upcoming episode on Blue Ridge PBS to culminate our work alongside this inspiring nonprofit!

Catch up on our work highlighting and helping Raising the Shade!

Our episode Feb. 5, 2025 shares the origins of Raising the Shade.

Our episode Aug. 27, 2025 shares the Raising the Shade forum in which scholars from around the U.S. came to Franklin County to share their research.

Where did I see myself in 5 years? 720 960 Michael Hemphill

Where did I see myself in 5 years?

My least favorite job interview question: “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”

As a peripatetic professional who claims at least 10 different jobs in my 32 years of post-college work, I am contemplating this question as I wrap up year 5 of Buzz4Good.

It was the start of the pandemic when we started rolling cameras in Spring 2020. The world was a fearful and isolating place. We masked and social distanced and sanitized as best we could while still trying to capture the beautiful humanity of those nonprofits – and the marketing pros willing to risk their own health – in those early episodes.

If you’d asked me then where I saw myself in 5 years, I would have replied, “I’ll be lucky to make it 5 months.”

I didn’t have a long-term strategic plan … still don’t. I lived by the mantra first uttered by my friend Bruce C. Bryan: “Head down, keep grinding. Head up, keep looking for opportunity.”

So we kept producing BUZZ episodes as that foundation grant or corporate sponsor came through … and sometimes when it didn’t. In 2021 WFIR offered an hour time slot on Saturday afternoons, so the Buzz4Good! radio show/podcast was born. My mother was diagnosed with cancer in 2023 (she’s in remission now), so I took BUZZ on the road to my hometown of Birmingham to highlight Alabama nonprofits while helping my sisters with Mom’s care. Around that time, my wife’s cousin Rob Orthwein, a livestream technical producer, moved to Roanoke, and so early this year our BUZZ Live! talk show began.

Last night we previewed our 78th episode to wrap up 2025. It stars Angels of Assisi and airs Dec. 3 on Blue Ridge PBS. By chance – or fate – it features development director Carol Jessee, who back in 2020 served as executive director of Southwest Virginia Ballet, the star of our very first episode. And it features Wordsprint owner Bill Gilmer, who also donated marketing assets to SVB in Episode 1.

Has BUZZ achieved the exposure and EMMYs I believe it merits? No. Has it gotten easier to raise money to fund this work? Nah. But I have secured $60,000 in grants for production in 2026 in both Virginia and Alabama, and have begun conversations about buzzing in Nashville … stay tuned.

I still have no idea where I see myself in 5 years. But I am looking back on where I was 5 years ago and saying, “Not bad, Michael. Not bad.”