Selected Client Stories
CHORUS FOUNDATION & SSIR (EDITORIAL)
As the Chorus Foundation prepared to spend down their assets, they asked us to coordinate a special supplement to the Stanford Social Innovation Review on the theme of philanthropy and power. We worked with a set of thoughtful authors, including Ash-Lee Henderson of the Highlander Center, Nwamaka Agbo of the Kataly Foundation, Sadaf Rassoul Cameron and Arianne Shaffer of the Kindle Project, Mónica Córdova of the Funders' Collaborative on Youth Organizing, Alexis Frasz of Helicon, Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano of Justice Funders, Vivian Yi Huang of APEN, Aisha Shillingford of Intelligent Mischief, Farhad Ebrahimi of the Chorus Foundation, and Aaron Tanaka, formerly of the Center for Economic Democracy.
OPEN BUFFALO (FILM)
Open Buffalo asked us to make a film telling the story of how the East Side of Buffalo came to have its current challenges. We made a 25-minute film about the housing policies, city planning decisions, and environmental racism that created the conditions that Open Buffalo and the community are working to overcome through their focus on ecological justice.
GWICHYAA ZHEE GWICH’IN TRIBAL GOVERNMENT (VIDEO)
It was our great honor to collaborate with Gwich’in linguist and cultural educator Rochelle Adams on a short film to support the Tribal Government’s efforts to protect salmon on the Yukon River. In this excerpt, First Chief Nancy James talks about what stewardship means to the Tribe.
APPALACHIAN VOICES (FILm)
On July 5, 2020, Dominion Energy announced that the proposed Appalachian Pipeline — a 600-mile natural gas pipeline that would have gone through parts of West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina — was being cancelled after a six-year fight. We worked with the Mertz Gilmore Foundation and Appalachian Voices to produce a film about this important environmental justice win, to inform and inspire others who are fighting dirty infrastructure projects around the country. The film premiered in Charlottesville in 2023 and is being distributed through conferences, festivals, and other environmental organizations. It was the Grand Jury winner for best environmental film at the 2023 Richmond International Film Festival.
SALMONSTATE (VIDEO ADS)
In Alaska, enormous factory trawlers threaten the future of the state’s salmon, halibut, and crab fisheries. The trawlers are licensed to catch pollock, but their nets catch and kill millions of pounds of other species each year. Already, Alaskan Native villages on the Yukon and Kuskokwim villages are prohibited from catching salmon, which they have relied on as a food source for thousands of years. We worked with SalmonState, Alaska Programmatic, and others in the state to produce an ad campaign that ran during meetings of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which regulates trawling. Our videos were watched to completion more than 375,000 times during the two-week campaign.
native peoples action (VIDEO)
We were honored to work with Native Peoples Action, SalmonState, Orutsararmiut Native Council, and others to protect the Kuskokwim River watershed from the proposed Donlin Gold Mine. Working in partnership with Alaskan filmmakers, we produced a short film to support the campaign.
chorus foundation (BRAND IDENTITY, STRATEGY, MEDIA, VIDEO, MORE)
The Chorus Foundation had only a temporary logo and a landing page when they asked us to develop a comprehensive communications program. Since then, we have provided a full range of services: brand identity, communications strategy, graphic design, website development, copywriting, video production, project management, and media relations.
Our first video for Chorus was an invitation to other funders to collaborate.
climate interactive (WRITING & DESIGN)
Climate Interactive plays a critical role in the movement against climate change with its fast, free, and easy-to-use simulations that help policy makers and students alike see the climate impacts of various policy decisions. Climate Interactive asked us to write and design a prospectus they could use as they seek $12 million to support their strategic plan. We worked with our colleagues at Sund Studio to complete the job.
mertz gilmore foundation (IN-HOUSE PROJECT MANAGEMENT)
As their work grew, the Mertz Gilmore Foundation asked Chris Landry to serve as a part-time, in-house consultant, supporting their climate and democracy work through project management, strategy development, program documentation, and more.
sumofus (EDITORIAL)
SumofUs is a community of people from around the world committed to curbing the growing power of corporations. They asked us to help write and edit an advisory paper for investors and fund managers about the risks of maintaining a stake in Facebook, given the company’s many scandals and strong signals that governments around the world are planning to crack down on Facebook’s flagrant violations of anti-trust and consumer privacy laws.
citizen action of new york (VIDEO)
Citizen Action of New York is a grassroots membership organization helping union members and other activists understand the causes of the massive economic inequality in the United States, how our economic system was built on the exploitation of Black and brown people, and how dismantling racism is a key part of achieving economic justice. We worked with them to produce videos that support the training, including the piece below that examines how private equity undermines working people and the economy.
transhealth northampton (BRAND IDENTITY)
Transhealth Northampton is the first health clinic in western New England with a mission of serving transgender and non-binary patients and their families. As they prepared to open their doors, they asked us to develop their brand identity. Using market research, a series of interactive workshops, and interviews with non-binary residents of the region, our team (which included two trans or non-binary team members) developed their identity — mission, values, tone of voice, and visual expression — and website, giving the organization a shared understanding of who they are and a core story to share with the community.
solidaridad (STRATEGY, FILM)
Solidaridad is a global NGO that invented fair trade coffee and has continued to innovate on the equitable and sustainable sourcing of more than a dozen commodities. As they planned to open a North American division, they hired us to develop and oversee their communications strategy. Later, Solidaridad Central America asked us to complete a number of projects, including a short film about sustainable agriculture in Honduras.
“The result was immediate,” says Michaelyn Bachuber, Managing Director for Central America. “Our partners were so moved to see the impact of their investments that, in less than one month, the video resulted in $1.2 million of additional investment. I’d recommend Chris to anyone.”
DEMOCRACY INITIATIVE (VIDEO)
Across the country, environmental organizations are working to address the climate crisis while trying to keep the regulatory wins of the past fifty years from being undone. Their success will depend largely on their ability to overcome a growing obstacle to environmental justice: systematic efforts to undermine our democracy. We worked with the Democracy Initiative and their allies to tell stories designed to inspire foundations to invest at the intersection of environmental justice and democracy in advance of the 2020 elections.