Planning a film festival is no small task, especially for a small nonprofit without marketing support. Like any fundraising event, it requires significant resources, strategic planning, and several dedicated staff members with a deep understanding of marketing trends, best practices, and social media strategy. 

NatureTrack was in the process of planning its 6th annual film festival — to support its overall mission of enriching lives through connection with nature. But the organization’s team was stretched thin, lacking the necessary funds and bandwidth to manage the mountain of tasks that came with planning this event.

Sue Eisaguirre, Founder and Executive Director of NatureTrack, recognized that her team needed some immediate support. They needed a partner who could contribute to their goal and help find sponsors, otherwise their event would get canceled.

Bringing on a new external team to handle the film festival event presented a whole slew of obstacles all on its own. What if they couldn’t meet NatureTrack’s needs or standards? And what about the cost? This job was too big for just one person, and NatureTrack couldn’t afford an entire team. That’s when Sue discovered Harness. She quickly saw an opportunity to leverage the Harness Executive team as support for the film festival – taking on marketing, design, and strategy roles – all without breaking her budget.  The success of the festival was at stake, and with it NatureTrack’s growth as an organization.

The Harness Executive team quickly proved their value, going above and beyond to exceed Sue’s expectations. They took the reins on planning the film festival – making sure it found additional sponsors so it could succeed, while expanding its reach to new audiences. NatureTrack experienced significant increases in engagement, thanks to Harness’ social media management and content strategies.

Overall, Harness diversified NatureTrack’s marketing strategy, giving it a more robust digital presence, including a new website for the festival, an email newsletter, on-brand social media updates, and more. Not only did they handle (and improve) everything, but on a budget that was actually less than NatureTrack initially intended. And once the festival planning was squared away, the Harness team didn’t stop there, diving right into other areas like grant writing, fundraising, and operations.