Case study · Children's Orchestra Society
We started recording their concerts in 1996. We now produce their films, run their livestreams, and built the systems they use to take donations, sell tickets, register students and run auditions. Nobody planned it that way. It widened one job at a time.
Since 1996
Recording their concerts and recitals
74% more raised
Year-end appeal, using footage we already had
NYX Gold
50th Anniversary film
6 systems
Running their donations, tickets and intake
The client
Founded in New York in 1962 by Dr. Hiao-Tsiun Ma, who wrote parts children could actually play instead of turning them away. His first two students were his own children, one of whom, Dr. Yeou-Cheng Ma, still runs it. Michael Dadap has been artistic director since 1984.
They teach children on Long Island, perform at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, and their alumni include Yo-Yo Ma. It is a small organization doing work at a level that does not match its size.
1996 · Where it started
The first job was recording concerts and recitals. Then college audition recordings for their students, which is a different kind of pressure. A conservatory hears that file and decides something about a teenager's future on it. There is no second take a year later.
That went on for sixteen years before anyone mentioned video.
2012 · The second job
When we started producing video, COS was already a client of sixteen years. They did not audition production companies. They asked the person who had been recording their concerts since the nineties.
Concerts, recitals, livestreams, and eventually the films the organization uses to raise money.
2019 · The 50th Anniversary film
Seven minutes for the 50th anniversary. Dr. Yeou-Cheng Ma and Michael Dadap on the founding, the seven years the orchestra sat dormant, the $2,500 that restarted it, and what they were trying to build.
It won Gold at the 2020 NYX Awards in the nonprofit category. COS still uses it. Most of the quotes on their own website come out of that film.
The 74%
For a year-end appeal running through Giving Tuesday, we cut social media clips from the 50th Anniversary footage. No new shoot, no new budget. Just material we already had, edited for a different job than the one it was originally made for.
That campaign raised 74% more than the prior year's.
We know the number because we also built and run their website, so the giving data is not something we were told about afterward. This is the clearest example we have of why we plan shoots the way we do, and it is where Story Stacking comes from.
2023 · The third job
Three years ago they asked us to look at the website. It existed, which was about all it did. Nothing on it helped anyone run the organization.
Rebuilding it turned into rebuilding what sat behind it. We now handle their donation system, ticket sales, donor CRM, student registration, the audition process, and expense tracking.
All six of those touch money coming in or students coming through the door. A nonprofit does not hand those to a production company. They hand them to whoever has not let them down for a very long time.
July 2025 · The Philippines and Taiwan
COS took its students on a three-week tour of the Philippines and Taiwan with nothing in the budget to film it. Rather than turning it down, we proposed a documentary and helped them build a fundraiser around it. The campaign covered the travel and the film paid for its own production.
We were on the ground for three weeks in July 2025. That trip happened because of work we had done in India months earlier, which is a story of its own.
Filming the tour, the Philippines, July 2025
The sequence
When
What we took on
What it led to
1996
Sound engineering. Concerts, recitals, college audition recordings.
Sixteen years of it
2012
Video and livestream production.
The films they fundraise with
2019
The 50th Anniversary film. Gold, NYX Awards 2020.
Footage still in use
2023
The website, then the systems behind it.
Donations, tickets, CRM, registration, auditions, expenses
July 2025
Philippines and Taiwan tour documentary.
A film that funded itself
What it proves
We did not pitch any of this. We recorded concerts, and did it well enough for long enough that the next thing got offered. Then the one after that.
If you are trying to work out whether we are worth a call, this is the honest answer. One organization has watched us work for twenty-nine years and keeps giving us more to do.
Tell us what the film has to accomplish and when. 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