Case study · Nutley, New Jersey
The Phoenix Center hired us for a 25th anniversary gala film. What they got was something they kept using long after the gala, because it answered the question every prospective parent actually asks.
Bronze Telly
25th anniversary film, 2016
4 years later
Still shown to prospective parents
Referred
By another New Jersey nonprofit
Nutley, NJ
Serving eight New Jersey counties
The client
An accredited private school in Nutley, New Jersey for students ages 5 to 21 with autism, multiple disabilities, and behavioral and intellectual disabilities. Founded in 1991 with 16 students and 12 staff. Today it serves students from dozens of districts across eight New Jersey counties, Bergen among them.
In 2016 they were marking 25 years, and they wanted a film for the gala.
How we got the meeting
We had made Bergen Volunteer Medical Initiative's gala film the year before. They had worked with production companies before us, and what they told us stood out was how we ran interviews.
Nobody asked them to make an introduction. They made one anyway.
The brief
They wanted the film to cover their origin and the range of services they provide. Reasonable, and every organization asks for those.
The third thing was what it feels like to be part of the Phoenix family. They wanted parents to come away at ease that their children would be well cared for.
That is a different assignment. The first two are information. The third is a feeling, and you cannot get to it by listing programs.
What closed it
Our proposal listed the Bronze Telly we had won that year for Inspire, another school for children with disabilities. On paper that was the closest match to what they were asking for.
But what we screened in the meeting was the sleepaway camp work we had done for the Metropolitan YMCA of the Oranges. Camp and a special needs school are not the same organization, but they are the same problem: a parent handing their child to somebody else and needing to believe it will be alright.
The award said we had done schools. The camp film showed them the feeling they were asking us to produce. The second one is what closed the meeting.
2016 · The framework
Working on this film, we went looking for why the interview approach at BVMI had produced what it did. That search led into research on how people actually decide to give, and how a story lands differently depending on where the numbers sit.
What came out of it was a framework we could name, repeat, and eventually hand to someone else: Story + Heart = Action.
Everything downstream comes from here. The framework became Stories That Move Mountains, and later a workshop we teach to nonprofit teams. The Phoenix Center film is where it started being a method instead of an instinct.
The result
The film won a Bronze Telly.
Four years later we spoke with their executive director, who had been the school's principal when we made it. She told us they were still using the film, and told us why: they show it to prospective parents. It shows them the environment their child would be in.
A fundraising film ends when the campaign does. A film that answers whether a parent can trust you with their kid gets asked for every year.
That is the difference between a video about an organization and a film about what it feels like to be inside one.
Why this keeps happening
Sleepaway camps. A special needs school in Nutley and another one before it. A Saturday music program on Long Island. A three-week student tour of the Philippines and Taiwan.
Different organizations, same job underneath. In every one of them a parent is handing their child to somebody else, and the film has to earn that. The fundraising follows from it. It does not work the other way around.
New Jersey
The Phoenix Center in Essex County. Bergen Volunteer Medical Initiative in Hackensack. The Metropolitan YMCA of the Oranges across East Orange, Wayne, Fairview Lake and Sussex County.
All three won awards, and each one led to the next. We are based in Monticello, New York, and we have been driving down here for over a decade.
Tell us what the film has to accomplish and who needs to believe it. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right fit.
Most of these begin as a fifteen-minute call.
Last updated September 2026 · Nimble Dragon Studios · Monticello, New York