Pruning Back My Business & Closing NGO Storytelling

In gardening, there’s a practice of pruning. Cutting back a plant drastically to allow it to flourish later. To say that 2020 is a year of pruning is an understatement. In fact, I'm closing down a project that I've put everything into for the last five years. Here’s how it all began.

A few years ago, my friend Allison introduced me to her friend Laura. Laura was already living in Kigali, Rwanda where I was moving in just a few months.

Technically, Laura and I were each other's competition. We're both humanitarian photographers working in the same smallish city in Africa. But I don't think we ever saw it that way. We met, became instant friends, and spent hours talking about our businesses as only photo nerds can. I still dream about the little smoothie shop where we'd meet to dream up our next big business plans. When I met her, Laura was a freelancer but she was also running a blog called NGO Storytelling that she created as a resource for humanitarian storytellers around the world who wanted to learn better storytelling practices and how to handle ethical issues in the field. I joined her as co-editor and through the years we've published over 250 articles.

I'm really proud of what we've made. I love our podcast series which started as recordings of Laura and I's conversations about being humanitarian photographers and the realities of running our own businesses. Never underestimate the power of having a sounding board. So many of those conversations led to major leaps in my business.

We also interviewed over twenty-five people and organizations on our ethics blog series. We became sorta obsessed with how we could collect media more ethically. I learned so much from academics, communications directors, editors, and other humanitarian organizations. One big thing that came out of this series for me professionally was the idea of using participatory editing practices in my work. Like most humanitarian storytellers, my practice was to go out into the field, collect a story, edit it, and send the final edit to the nonprofit who'd hired me. It never occurred to me to be concerned that the person sharing their story had no input on how it was told or put out into the world. These days I focus on participatory practice where I collect the media, edit it, receive feedback and approval in collaboration with the participant, make the necessary changes, and then send it to my client. It might sound strange but I needed to learn that people and their experiences are more important than getting a story. And that while storytelling can be a healing modality, it can also cause people a lot of pain to re-visit traumatic events. Humanitarian storytellers have a lot of power when it comes to media collection, I hope we can learn to use this power for good.

Laura and I have done so much that I can’t fit it all in here. But I have to say that I am so proud of the survey we created on how much photographers are paid by nonprofits. I was shocked by the numbers and that nonprofit organizations which are often created for the welfare of other humans simply were not paying a fair wage to photographers and filmmakers. This was magnified for local photographers who were being offered rates that were far less than what western photographers were paid. Our industry needs to take a good long look at our payment structures and what is acceptable in the nonprofit industry. I have to admit that it was hard to look at those numbers and acknowledge that that industry that benefits me (because I am white and western) has some serious ethical problems. But I hope that I can continue to advocate for the hiring and fair pay for photographers (especially local photographers) around the world.

As much as Laura and I have loved NGO Storytelling. We've made the difficult decision to stop updating the website. Some of our decision has to do with the dumpster fire year of 2020, but a lot of it’s because it’s time for both of us to do some pruning.

For me, that’s a new focus on offering storytelling courses and brand/image story coaching to changemakers, communities, humanitarians, and entrepreneurs. I truly believe that if we want to change the world then sharing our stories is more important than ever. You can learn more about my new offerings here.

I'm also excited to share that Laura has started Creative + Moneywise to educate and coach photographers about starting/growing their business and getting their personal finances in order. She also has a podcast where she interviews photographers about their career and real-life money stories – and I was the first guest!

We plan to keep the website up for about two more years as a resource to all of you. Our store will close on December 15, so if you’ve been eyeing the humanitarian photography contract template or the cost of doing business calculator, please make your purchases before then.

I will be forever grateful for my time at NGO Storytelling and more importantly for the amazing partnership I had with Laura. To say that Laura is an incredible person is an understatement. It's not just that she's an amazing photographer and filmmaker. She's someone who is kind and just. She stands up for what she believes in, she’s fair, and she does everything from volunteer work to mentorship to make the world a better place. I might not have become a filmmaker without her influence. She's most certainly made me a better businessperson but maybe even more than that a better person. I have a feeling that while we’re pruning back NGO Storytelling, Laura and I will collaborate again. This is the step we need to take right now so our businesses have the opportunity to bloom into the successes we dreamed of over smoothies all those years ago.