Crafting Film, Igniting Change
Our Mission
Kindling Group is a nonfiction media studio that crafts outstanding documentaries and impact campaigns to inspire, entertain, and ignite change.
Our Values
Kindling Group adheres to the following core values when implementing our mission:
- We bring respect into everything we do, from subjects and viewers to our co-workers and partners.
- We believe well-told stories are the core, but not the totality, of documentary filmmaking; that stories are told to change people and inspire action. As a result, we strive to break down barriers between production and engagement for deeper impact.
- We place support for and collaboration with filmmakers, activists, and communities of all colors and backgrounds at the heart of our process.
- As traditional media models are disrupted, we recognize opportunities to reach audiences on screens, both big and small, and across genres and media formats.
KG’s Approach to Impact
For two decades, Kindling has been designing innovative engagement campaigns around our films and series and the topics they explore — from homelessness to early childhood education, faith, veterans issues, conspiracy theories, and birth justice. With each effort, Kindling leverages a mix of traditional and emerging distribution and engagement tools, based on clearly defined goals and strategies to spark conversation and foster measurable action and change.
Learn more about KG’s Impact Campaigns
Every KG engagement campaign is unique, but all of our impact work rests on six key pillars:
- High Quality Content: Compelling, high quality media is the key to impact.
- Engagement from Day One: Impact is not an afterthought, it is the goal from the start.
- A Project Ethos: Each campaign has a clearly defined goal and a message that lets audiences know exactly what we stand for and what our goals are.
- Platform-Agnostic Strategy: We leverage content, platforms and tools that reach target audiences where they already “live,” online and off.
- Mutually Beneficial Partnerships: We work with partners to understand their goals and audience, to create alignment and build meaningful, lasting coalitions.
- Optimizing our Approach: We track audience reactions and iterate based on what is most effectively driving conversation and action.
When we invest our hearts, souls and treasure into a project, it is for the love of the story and a commitment to the issues these stories explore. These changing times call for risk taking and bold experimentation in the documentary form and in the ways we reach audiences. The old models are breaking down and we embrace the opportunities to create a rich ecosystem of compelling content, reach more people and to activate them to create change.
No Small Matter’s over 1300 community screenings in all 50 states, including 20+ state house screenings
Two seasons of Veterans Coming Home reached over 5 million viewers
Radical Grace screened at more than 40 festivals worldwide, winning audiences awards at Hot Docs Film Festival, and AFI Docs.
The Calling reached over 5 million viewers on a national PBS broadcast leveraged through over 100 webisodes exploring unique “callings”
A Doula Story federal funding for the replication of the community-based doula model featured in the film.
If you’d like to learn more about working with Kindling Group on your film’s engagement campaign, email us at info@kindlinggroup.org.
Our Team
Work with Kindling Group
Job Openings
Kindling Group is always looking for talented, qualified candidates. If you’re interested in learning more about Kindling Group, email us at info@kindlinggroup.org.
Internship
Kindling Group offers a competitive hands-on internship program to aspiring and active film and media makers who are passionate about a career in digital media storytelling.
Interns at Kindling Group build foundational knowledge and skills through a variety of organizational, production, and engagement projects. Our internship program is geared toward those just beginning their professional careers in the world of documentary film production, journalism, communications, or related fields. As an intern, you will be quickly immersed in our team, gaining first-hand exposure to the inner-workings of a leading Chicago nonprofit documentary film company. Our interns will have hands-on opportunities to contribute to our current active projects in the following areas of documentary filmmaking: Research/Archives, Production, Post-production, Animation/Graphic and Digital Impact Campaigns.
Throughout the program interns participate in professional development lunches with Kindling staff, current filmmakers collaborating with KG and other partner professionals in the field and receive opportunities for feedback on their own independent work. Each term is a unique experience and tailored to the stated goals of the interns and the slate of KG films.
If you’re interested, please email your resume and cover letter to the email below. A writing sample and/or reel is not required, but welcome.
Email for more information or to apply: info@kindlinggroup.org.
No phone calls, please.
Contact Us
Kindling Group
5501 N. Clark St., 2nd Fl.
Chicago, Illinois 60640
773-728-8489
For inquiries, please email:
info@kindlinggroup.org
Daniel Alpert
Laura Fallsgraff
Mara Sheban
Ingrid Roettgen
Adam Joel
Adam Wisneski
Ines Sommer
