Film Festival Partner Database and Festival Wings Outreach Strategy

We are looking for a film industry professional with festival relationships or strategy experience to build a Film Festival Partner Database and Festival Wings Outreach Strategy. The volunteer will deliver a vetted database of 40 to 50 film festivals (regional, national, and select international) with alignment scoring for our Festival Wings program, partnership fit notes, contact details, and a 90-day outreach sequence including 3 templates and a 12-month festival calendar.

Scope of work includes the following:
1. Research 40 to 50 film festivals aligned with our focus (emerging filmmakers, BIPOC, diaspora, youth, social impact, documentary)
2. Score each festival on partnership fit (waiver potential, mentorship pipeline, audience overlap, prestige tier)
3. Capture submission deadlines, partnership contacts, and program coordinators
4. Draft 3 outreach templates (festival partnership intro, Festival Wings program pitch, follow up)
5. Map a 12-month festival calendar with our outreach cadence
6. Document the tier framework and prioritization logic for our team

The ideal volunteer has experience as a festival programmer, submissions strategist, film publicist, festival circuit producer, or industry consultant, and a love for the festival ecosystem. This project should take 25 to 35 hours to complete. We are hopeful that our volunteer partner will share 2 to 5 hours of their time per week.

Ineffable Films exists to make sure that the stories of emerging and underserved filmmakers actually travel. Festivals are the literal moment of travel. They are the ticket gate where a filmmaker stops being someone who made a short film and becomes a filmmaker whose work is being seen by an audience.

Festival Wings is our program that gets emerging filmmakers their first festival selection. Every festival this volunteer adds to our database is a potential first selection for someone. We are talking about a 17 year old in San Diego seeing their name on a marquee for the first time. A college student from Boston walking a real red carpet. A Bandung filmmaker premiering in the United States.

Festival relationships compound. A festival that programs one of our filmmakers this year becomes a champion for the next 5 we send. A programmer who attends one of our screenings becomes a mentor to 10 of our youth. Your work on this project does not just build a database. It builds a ladder, and that ladder is how the next generation of underrepresented voices climbs into the industry.

Our Film Festivals and Partnerships lead, Hertie Gutierrez, brings extensive festival relationships and active festival conversations. We have a GoHighLevel CRM with a festival submissions pipeline already built. Our Festival Wings program is documented and operational. We have a Confluence wiki for documentation under our Atlassian Social Impact License.

The volunteer will work directly with our Founder and CEO and Hertie, with weekly 30 minute check ins. Our Programs lead will provide context on which filmmakers we are currently supporting through Festival Wings.

Once complete, the database and 12-month festival calendar become the operational backbone of our Festival Wings program, directly determining which festivals our supported filmmakers submit to and where our team focuses partnership development.