Our Goal is to Communicate Your Mission
Our Goal is to Communicate Your Mission
Idea Tree is a full-service, student-staffed media production and strategic communications agency servicing the nonprofit community in the greater St. Louis area. We鈥檝e worked with arts and education organizations, neighborhood and community groups, health initiatives and event organizers. We are proud of our record of helping organizations fulfill their mission through targeted communications and professionally produced media.
High-Quality Communications for Nonprofit Organizations
High-Quality Communications for Nonprofit Organizations
Looking for ways to grow your organization鈥檚 reach? Do you need high-quality videos to communicate to funders, educate an audience or recruit volunteers? Partnering with Idea Tree gives you all that and more, and our students benefit from working on real projects with a real client. You will work directly with our team to realize your vision, supported by a faculty supervisor who has years of professional experience.
鈥淔rom start to finish, the students made a complicated scheduling and production process feel easy, and the resulting video was just fantastic.鈥�
Director of Development, FOCUS St. Louis
What We Offer
Strategic Communications
Students provide campaign recommendations for Idea Tree clients to support their persuasive communications efforts. Campaign components are customized for each client after executing an extensive business communications review. Students then develop strategic and creative recommendations in the area of traditional, digital and social media communications to address key objectives. Students work directly with assigned clients under instructor supervision.
Media Production
Students work together to produce professional quality videos. We are a full-service production house, offering idea development, production, and editing and finishing.
Past Projects and Clients
Past Projects and Clients
We have a proven track record with dozens of satisfied clients, some of which spanned multiple projects over multiple years. Previous clients of our student-run production team include:
- City of Clayton: For their centennial celebration, Clayton city officials wanted a video showcasing Clayton history and some of its best-known names. We shot new interviews and collected others (some from celebrities), edited and did motion graphics for the final video, which was screened at the event to much success.
- Kids In the Middle: For several years, Idea Tree captured and edited a video documenting the annual fundraising event that Kids In the Middle put on to help benefit children struggling with the impact of a divorce. It was a full-service project on a very tight timeline: we had two hours to get all of interviews, capture all footage, etc.
- Sneakers With Soul: Sneakers with Soul needed a video to explain to potential donors how valuable a new pair of shoes is to the health and self-esteem of underprivileged young people. We worked with them on crafting the concept, shooting, editing and motion graphic design.
- Surgeons For the Americas: This group, who provides life saving and life altering surgeries free of charge to populations in Central and South America needed someone to make a coherent video out of a bunch of footage their surgeons and volunteers shot over several trips and blend that with brand new interviews we shot.
- Zombie Squad: Zombie Squad is an organization that uses the metaphor of a zombie apocalypse to train people in disaster preparedness and emergency medicine. For their decidedly off-beat brand, we were lucky to script a very fun and funny video explaining how to get off the grid as a family.
Client Videos
Almost Home
Almost Home provides transitional housing, life skill training and educational assistance to underage mothers. Our video was intended to show the plight of young mothers who often become homeless, underemployed and poverty-stricken, and how the services provided by the organization can raise them from that hopeless situation. The video was so successful that the organization had us do a refresher video a few years later, and when its executive director left, she called on us to do another video for her new organization. For all the videos, we provided ground-up services, from ideation to development to shooting, editing and delivery.
Transcript
[Light instrumental music plays in background throughout.]
Text on screen: Client Work: Almost Home, 四虎影视 SOC
[A person walks down the steps of an apartment building and walks down sidewalk and some streets to a bus stop and sits down.]
Narrator 1: I grew up in the roughest part of St. Louis. It was very dangerous. Like, literally I walked outside my door one day and there was a dead body at the bottom of my steps. We couldn't sleep by the window.
Narrator 2: We didn't have anything to live in place to place. Homelessness wasn't new to me. I didn't really understand it because it was my world. It was all I knew.
Narrator 3: It had its bad days and when it was bad, it was really bad.
Narrator 4: When I found out I was pregnant I was freaking out. I was very nervous.
Narrator 5: It's like a blank feeling. I don't want to say it, I'm happy you like in the middle. I'm pregnant. I just thought oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.
Narrator 6: My mom. She was mad and crying.
Narrator 7: They weren't very excited about it. They thought that it was a foolish mistake and that I should have waited.
Narrator 8: Gotta make the best of it. I gotta keep this baby. Nobody's gonna blame me. Keep this baby, like nobody agree with me. Gonna make the best of it.
Text on screen: Ashley, Alumni/Transitional Living Coach: My older sister, she researched stable places to go, and she found Almost Home.
Text on screen: Keita, Current Member: This was the first time I was on my own. I always had my mom or a granny.
Text on screen: Jamesha, Alumni: I really love staying here because if I ever need help with something as far as my kids. Like especially Stephanie, the one who told me about the program. She will always say, 鈥淒o you need me to watch the kids? You look like you need a nap.鈥�
Text on screen: Keana, Current Member: I think of it as home. I don't think of it as a permanent home but you know for the moment, it's home.
Text on screen: Tyiesha, Alumni: When I came, I felt love. I felt like I never had family before.
Text on screen: Tequoyah, Alumni: So this was gonna be my new beginning. My new place to start all over to reinvent myself. For becoming a new person and meet new people.
Text on screen: Xzariya, Current Member: I'm excited to meet new people all the time. All the time. So I'm just like alright you do this because you're shown a role. I'll try to put the past behind me. Leave that alone. Start fresh here. Like a fresh start.
Jamesha: Everyone makes mistakes. You know. That's how I look at it. Everyone makes mistakes, and you learn from them.
Xzariya: We had an accident. The babies were an accident.
Text on screen: Jonea, Current Member: Just because we have a baby, like we can do more stuff then just be a mom.
Jamesha: Almost Home has five goals: Education, Employment, Parenting, Emotional Well-being and Independence.
Ashley: We focus on education. Without education they won't be able to be employable
Xzariya: I'm hungry. Like a want a job so bad in my career so I can finally be on my own. That what I want to do. Be like stable. Make my kids happy.
[Two people look at business suit clothes in a store.]
Keita: I can be a mom and survive.
Jonea: Learn about different ways to raise our children.
[Person feeds a baby a bottle sitting in a chair.]
Ashley: Hope is the best contraception. So we give them counseling to get them at a level to where they are ready to change.
[Two people sit in chairs in a playroom with kid鈥檚 books and furniture. One holds a baby. They are talking and laughing together.]
Tequoyah: This place helps people. It saves lives. It's taught me so much.
[Person plays with a child on the floor.]
Jonea: Like I'm better than what I used to be. I'm not always sad.
Tequoyah: Almost Home is basically given me the inspiration to go after every dream I wanted to do.
Jamesha: They want us to get an education. They want us to get higher employment. They want us to be a supervisor or a boss one day, a manager, you know.
Ashley: Most people don't live within their means. So it's important to teach our young ladies to live within their means.
Keauna: They help you become a better parent. Take things a different way.
[Classroom with a teacher giving instructions to a class.]
Narrator 10: They have taught me independence and taught me self-discipline.
[Three people in a break room getting coffee or drinks.]
Xzariya: Trying working really hard towards our goal.
Jonea: And just pushing me and it makes me happy because I never had like this support before.
Keita: I just want to give everybody a big hug. And tell everybody thank you cause it's how I really feel about it.
Tequoyah: We don't want people looking at us and feeling sorry for us.
Ashley: We are trying to break this chain of poverty.
Tyiesha: We really don鈥檛 need no one to feel bad for us. We feel bad for ourselves. You know.
Tequoyah: A lot of us come from really treacherous, dangerous backgrounds. Some of us have grown up very poor.
Ashley: You know, the continuous chain.
Jamesha: But I really wanna go to college. I want to be someone. I wanna go to college now. I want to be someone and donations to help out a lot of the day.
[Kids plays with toys on a carpet floor.]
Narrator 11: If I don't have hope or something to look forward to that I don't have a reason to strive and live.
Xzariya: Help would be like ahhhh.
[Smiling child sits in playroom.]
Narrator 12: You could literally save a life.
Ashley: It's important to donate today because these children are suffering. Not only the young ladies, but their children are suffering.
[More kids play with more toys on a carpeted floor.]
Jonea: Us girls, we've been through a lot so far in our lives.
Keita: Whatever you can spare or whatever you have extra. That鈥檇 be a ton of help.
[People and kids play with toys.]
Jamesha: The donations help a lot. Even if it's not a lot, it's still a smile on someone鈥檚 face.
Tyiesha: I think it's very important that people reach out and try to support and help. I really appreciate that.
[Person sits at bus stop.]
Narrator 12: Almost Home was founded in 1993 with the capacity to house five mothers between the ages of 12 and 19 years old. With the help from donors and volunteer efforts, Almost Home has grown and can now provide temporary housing and support services for 15 moms, and 25 children. Almost Home continues to provide these services for up to eight years, through our alumni support program in order to break the cycle of poverty, two generations at a time.
[Kids play in a playroom.]
Narrator 12: Almost Home relies heavily upon the generous contributions from our donors and volunteers, if you are interested in contributing, please visit www.almosthome.stl.org or call 314-771-HOME. Almost Home is inspiring teen moms to create a better life for themselves and their children.
[Music ends]
鈥淚 wanted to thank you and your students for the 'Almost Home' video. I was really pleased with the final product, and the students were great to work with. I appreciate their patience with the filming schedule and other planning issues. The video captured the feel we wanted, and the response has been very positive. Thanks so much for agreeing to work with us again. Your students are the best!鈥�
-Rhonda Grey, Executive Director, Almost Home
The Plantrician Project
The Plantrician Project
The Plantrician Project video was unique, as it was all animated graphics intended to help physicians learn the critical importance of plant-based nutrition on overall health.
Transcript
Seeds of Hope
鈥淚'm writing to let you know how impressed I am with the short film your students created about the teen internship program on the farm. It is so professional, heartwarming and the perfect length to be used for fundraising and awareness-raising purposes. Thank you so much for the opportunity to work with your students and for this beautiful film! You have certainly done an outstanding job guiding them through the process of film making. I am thoroughly impressed!鈥�
-Deirdre Hall, Seeds of Hope
Transcript
In progress.