Her Next Steps, a small nonprofit serving women entrepreneurs in developing countries, hired me to create a promo video aimed at potential donors. The catch? I could only use iPhone photos and short video clips provided by the staff.

Over several meetings, we hashed out the organization’s core “case for support” that would attract their target donors. I wrote a voiceover script and worked with the staff to record it professionally. Then I parsed through hundreds of photos, pulled out my favorites, and stitched it together in DaVinci Resolve into a video narrative to accompany the voiceover.

The finished result is below. My big takeaway from the project is that telling a great nonprofit story doesn’t require “cinematic” or “pro” visuals. It just requires an understanding of what story you’re trying to tell, who you’re telling it to, and capturing the story as it happens—even if it’s just through the lens of a smartphone.