$9 million. Sixteen grants. One story, told city by city.
When the T.D. Jakes Foundation and Wells Fargo awarded their first $9 million in community grants, someone had to show the country what the money actually does. Griffith Media spent the first half of 2024 on the road doing exactly that: 15 recipient films, seven cities, one cohesive voice.
A billion-dollar partnership needed its stories told like they mattered.
In 2023, the T.D. Jakes Group and Wells Fargo announced a ten-year collaboration aimed at directing up to $1 billion toward underserved communities. The first act: $9 million in grants to 16 organizations, HBCUs, housing nonprofits, museums, entrepreneurship centers, spread across the country.
Checks that size deserve more than a press release. The Foundation needed every recipient’s story told on the ground, in their own voice, and it needed all of them to feel like chapters of one program, not fifteen disconnected videos. That’s the job Griffith Media was handed.
Seven cities. One traveling crew.
Most stories we flew to, one or two operators carrying a full mobile kit: cinema cameras, audio, and lighting, so every interview looked lit and intentional, not grabbed. Some films wove in b-roll the recipients provided; where travel didn’t make sense, we directed local crews remotely, all of it cut inside the same storytelling system. The audience can’t tell which was which. That was the point.
- Los Angeles
- SoLa I CAN Foundation
- Dallas
- The Dallas Entrepreneur Center
- Paul Quinn College
- Wiley University (Marshall, TX)
- Tulsa
- Greenwood Rising
- Greenwood Cultural Center
- Atlanta
- Westside Future Fund
- Operation Hope
- Augusta
- Community Foundation of the CSRA
- Washington, D.C.
- SFEPD
- HomeFree-USA
- New York
- Jackie Robinson Foundation
Fifteen films that feel like one series.
Cohesion doesn’t happen in the edit. It happens before the first flight. Every film ran the same play: the recipient’s leaders on camera in their own space, the work shown where it happens, and one branded graphics package carrying both marks, the mission language, and the numbers.
Different city every time, different cinematographer on many of them, and you cannot tell. The system is the style.
One story structure
Leader interviews, the work on the ground, and the grant's 'what happens next', every chapter reads the same way.
One graphics system
Co-branded open, lower thirds, and mission cards: designed once, versioned fifteen times.
Every film, both formats
A 16:9 master and a 9:16 social cut for each story: 30 finished pieces delivered.
Approved, shot, delivered, some in the same week.
“Their agility and quality will meet and often exceeds expectations. I never have to think about what I’m going to get. Working with Griffith Media allows me to continue growing the vision.”
Jamel Ware · Executive Producer/Director, The Potter’s House of Dallas | T.D. Jakes Ministries, who oversaw the grant film series
The program’s own account: the $9 million, 16-organization announcement.
A Griffith Media production
Produced end to end for the T.D. Jakes Foundation · Filmed across the United States, 2024
A story in every city. One voice across all of them.
If your organization funds work across the country, we’ll build the storytelling system and put the crew on the plane, and every chapter will sound like you.