The Joy Collective · Birmingham, Alabama
The Story Engine that moves revenue, enrollment, and funding.
One engagement. One production window. A year of stories for the seasons everything depends on. First cut in 21 days, guaranteed.
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You get one shot at this season.
The funding year. The enrollment push. The launch. The leadership change.
Everyone around you agrees the story matters. Everyone has an opinion. And when you finally hire a production company, you get what you asked for:
One nice video.
It plays at the event, lives on the site for a while, then disappears into the feed. The board forgets it. Staff can't find it. The next campaign starts from zero again.
You didn't need another video.
You needed an engine.
Picture next season instead.
Your next donor meeting opens with a two minute story that feels like your work, not a generic reel.
Your admissions team has a simple link they drop into every "what should we expect" email. Families show up already warmed.
Your careers page, your gala, your year end appeal, your conference opener all use the same shared story, told at the right depth for each room.
Your marketing lead isn't scrambling for content. They're pulling from a labeled library of films, clips, and stills, each already assigned a job.
The board isn't asking "why are we spending on another video." They're saying "this is the same story we approved, now working across everything we do."
And you did it with one engagement, one production window, and transparent timelines everyone could see on day one.
Why you're stuck.
It's not because you don't tell stories. It's because the way stories get made in most organizations is broken.
You hire one vendor for a brand film, another for social, another for photos. Each one asks for "your talking points" and "your goals" like you haven't had this conversation ten times already. No one maps how a donor, buyer, or family actually moves from first touch to yes. Assets get handed off as files and links, with no clear jobs, no rollout, and no support for the champion who has to sell it upstairs.
So you end up with:
- One hero video that's hard to reuse and hard to find.
- Social cuts planned in a conference room that don't match what was actually shot.
- A hard drive of footage no one has time to organize.
- A board that sees creative spend, not campaign infrastructure.
It's not that your team can't execute.
It's that no one gave them an engine.
The Moment Map Method.
The Story Engine fixes this by changing how the story is built from the start.
MapBefore anything is filmed, we sit down with your executive director, founder, or leadership team and name the problem under the stated one. We map how buyers, donors, or families move from first touch to yes. We assign every installed story a job and reserve the pool of short form stories by theme.
CaptureOne scoped production window, usually one shoot day, with a cinema grade crew that knows they're shooting for multiplication. Everything is filmed with the end system in mind.
MultiplyThat window becomes your flagship story film, your short form assets, a visual story library, and the rollout system. Nothing shot once gets used once.
DeployEvery story leaves classed and mapped, with a 90 day rollout grid, a team activation session, and a Board Pack behind it, so the stories don't die in the feed.
It's one program, not a random shoot.
Trusted by organizations across Alabama
The Altamont SchoolBirmingham Business AllianceAlabama 911 BoardAlbert Schweitzer FellowshipTherapy SouthAlabama Farm Credit
What you get.
When you book The Story Engine ($25,000, one transparent fee), you get four components.
01 · The Flagship Story Film
The definitive who you are, why you exist film. A mini movie for the brand that gives it a voice and works for years. Everything else gets built around it.
02 · The Short Form Assets
Up to 20 short form stories, each built for a specific job. Most are built for your ongoing social channels; around five are built specifically for your funnel: sales conversations and the messages people receive after they book.
Includes the BTS gallery, and the Quick Wins: BTS photos, finished stills, and a teaser of the flagship film within 7 days of the shoot, so your board sees something real before the full film lands.
03 · The Visual Story Library
The website hero loop, the curated stills archive, and the full raw library: every frame organized, custom graded, with a drag and drop walkthrough, yours to keep. Includes the asset index and usage guide.
Your team inherits a studio, not a hard drive.
04 · The Rollout System
The Moment Map: a strategy session with leadership plus the written map naming priority audiences, core narrative, and campaign seasons. The 90 day rollout grid so you see what goes live where, and when. A 60 minute team activation session. And the Board Pack: a short board and finance brief plus a one page decision memo your champion can send before the vote.
Every story is classed installed (placed once, works always: the pinned culture story on the careers page, the hero loop, the film in the donor deck) or scheduled (cadence into the feed for the next 90 days). Most of the engine is installed. Installed stories don't scroll.
And we don't pre assign your social stories from a conference room. The shoot tells us what the best stories are; the rollout grid assigns them the week your library delivers.
The guarantees.
We only guarantee what we control. And we write it down.
The First Cut Guarantee
First cut of the flagship story film within 21 days of the final shoot day, or 10% of your project fee back. Full library within 45 days of anchor approval. If we miss those clocks for reasons within our control, you don't have to argue about it.
The Moment Map Delivery Guarantee
The strategy phase ends when you hold four concrete assets: a recorded strategy session, the written map, a draft shot list and interview plan, and a draft deployment outline for your first 90 days. All four within 5 business days of the live session, or 10% back. Once delivered, the map is yours to keep, whether or not production proceeds.
The investment.
If you bought this the usual way over a year, here's what it costs at transparent market midpoints:
| Bought separately | |
|---|
| Brand story film | $15,000 |
| 20 short form cuts on a retainer | $25,000 |
| Brand photography day plus curation | $5,000 |
| Website hero production | $2,500 |
| Organized, graded footage library plus training | $5,000 |
| Strategy engagement at consulting rates | $5,000 |
| Four or five vendors, twelve months | about $57,500 |
The Story Engine does all of it in one engagement, one production window, with one shared story and a rollout system:
One transparent feeThe Story Engine · $25,000
50% to hold the production window. 50% at first cut delivery.
Three pay available at the same total. Price is never negotiated; scope and terms are.
Book a Call
Share the season on your calendar and leave with a transparent read on whether the engine fits.
For seasons where everything rides on the story, this is infrastructure, not content.
Questions, answered straight.
Who is The Story Engine for?
Founders, executives, and marketing leaders at nonprofits, schools, associations, and founder led companies walking into a season where the outcome rides on how the story lands: a funding year, an enrollment push, a launch, or a leadership change.
How much time will this take from our leadership team?
We print a transparent time budget in every proposal: about 90 minutes from your executive director, 4 to 6 hours from your marketing lead across the whole engagement, 30 to 40 minutes on camera per person, and three meetings total.
What if the board doesn't approve the spend?
That's exactly why the Board Pack exists. Your internal champion gets a clear, finance friendly brief and a one page decision memo to circulate before the vote, so the project is understood as campaign infrastructure, not a one off video.
What if the strategy session doesn't deliver?
The Moment Map Delivery Guarantee covers it. If we don't deliver the four promised strategy assets within 5 business days, you get 10% back, and you keep the map either way.
Do you guarantee results on donations, enrollment, or sales?
No. Those outcomes depend on factors nobody honest can promise. We guarantee the stories, the library, the rollout plan, and the clocks we control, and we'll show you transparent examples from organizations like yours so you can see how they used their engine.
Is there a lighter version?
There is. Some teams only need the library, not the full strategy and rollout system, and there's a leaner engagement built for exactly that. Book a call and we'll tell you honestly which one fits your season.
What if we need more than one story this year?
That's The Story Engine Partner: two separate stories across the year, each with its own planning, shoot, and library, plus quarterly strategy sessions. If your year includes a live event worth capturing, we scope that into the plan.
How many engagements do you take?
We cap at three to four productions a month so every engagement gets founder attention from strategy through final cut. When a season fills, we book the next window.