CFSEM: Building the Tradition

CFSEM: Building the Tradition
Length: 15 minutes
This anniversary video for and about the wonderful Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan was a very unusual assignment.

In 2009, we were in Detroit making a video about the Michigan Model of Philanthropy for the Diversity in Philanthropy Project (DPP), and as part of that had met and interviewed Mariam Noland, ED of CFSEM, and Allan Gilmour, Chair of the CFSEM Board.

All went well.

A month later CFSEM called. They had a problem.  A proposed 25th anniversary video for the foundation had been contracted with the name-withheld-here video production company, it had cost a pile of money, yet during the interviews the unnamed company had bungled the questions, managed to antagonize many of CFSEM’s key donors and leaders, and make the process so painful for the involved CFSEM staff that in the end, the whole anniversary video idea had been abandoned.  Unfinished. But then they had met us. So … here was their question:

“Could you pry the footage from the hands of this other company, add some of the great material about CFSEM that you shot yourselves, and with a very short amount of time before the event, edit together an anniversary video, allowing for CFSEM’s full and active creative participation as clients, and deliver a 15 minute video that will include every single board member who was interviewed but will also be fun and interesting so that the video can be featured at the upcoming big deal gala anniversary event and make everyone happy?”

And with very little sleep at all, in a very short amount of time, the answer turned out to be:
Yes!

Thank-you CFSEM!