Whatever Bridges Need Crossing: Six Distribution Innovation Funders on Experimentation, Transparency, and What Comes Next
As distribution innovation funds multiply across the U.S., Canada, and the UK, six funders compare what they’ve learned and what the field still needs to build.
Since launching our own FilmADE Fund in summer 2024, we’ve seen four new funds granting and investing in distribution innovations launched in the past 12 to 18 months. One of them was run by Color Congress, which earlier this month published a milestone case study compendium of the eight marketing experiments taken on behalf of nonfiction films by filmmakers of color. The publication provided an occasion to convene a conversation between the funders.
So on a Friday afternoon, Karin Chien moderated a roundtable discussion with all four funds participating by zoom, and a fifth fund, the BFI Audience Projects Fund, joining by email, due to time zone differences. The edited roundtable starts on well-trod ground— cataloguing audience, impact, and distribution challenges—before taking a less traveled path into sharing the funders’ own learnings, surprises and their strongest wishes for the future.
A note on why we convened this roundtable. When we started the FilmADE Fund, we hoped to instigate experimentation and provide space for failure, which often generates outsized learnings. We are thrilled to be meeting that goal. What we didn’t expect was the consequent emergence of four new distribution funds centering experimentation and learning. Maybe this proves that risk capital tends to attract more risk capital. Indeed, our observation of BFI’s audience experimentation in the UK inspired our own.
Maybe it proves that everyone finally agreed the distribution space was ripe for intervention. So, we saw an opportunity for an open conversation across six funds about funding experimentation for public benefit. The answers around how to fund innovation are fledgling, but spark what we hope is continued motivation to apply grant funding in the truest sense of risk capital. We offer this edited conversation to encourage further open dialogues across the non-profit funder ecosystem and to shed insight for those piloting innovations and seeking philanthropic capital in emergent spaces.
Download Color Congress’s Elev8Docs full report here.
First, the Players and Facts
Sahar Driver and Sonya Childress, co-founders and co-executive directors of Color Congress (CC), describe CC’s field building fund as an annual innovation fund of $300,000, which can be dedicated in two year parcels for larger interventions, such as Elev8Docs, which came in at $675,000, with the additional support of Pop Culture Collaborative. Per Sahar, the fund works as a consent-based collective decision-making process: CC’s membership determines shared challenges, incubates solutions, and then tries out unique interventions. In 2024, this resulted in Elev8Docs, managed throughout 2025 by Sahar and Sonya. Distribution Advocates designed eight marketing experiments, ranging from $21,000 to $100,000 per experiment, covering services, marketing and publicity strategists, ads, and more. Outputs include a members-focused learning series, public talks, and a case study compendium by the learning and evaluation firm Informing Change.
Amy Hobby, co-founder of Distribution Advocates, describes the FilmADE Fund as an innovation fund granting experiments specifically for U.S. theatrical and non-theatrical releases. Nine grants have been awarded, averaging $25,000, and ranging from $5,000 to $50,000. The grants do not fund core distribution activities; they offset distributors’ or producers’ risk of testing new methodologies. Distribution Advocates decides collectively on the awards. Each experiment results in a data-centered case study, published on this Substack.
Lalita Krishna, chair of the Canadian Independent Screen Fund (CISF), explains that CISF was dormant before reviving in 2020 as a redesigned fund for Black and racialized creators in Canada. As a certified independent production fund, CISF will receive up to CA$5-6 million through mandatory streamer contributions, currently being held in escrow while the legislation is in appeal. In the meantime, CISF identified discoverability of Canadian content as a pain point, leading to a two-pronged program to address audience engagement. Inspired by the FilmADE Fund, the first prong targeted marketing initiatives, funding four projects up to CA$15,000 each in 2025 for targeted community screenings. The second develops audience engagement specialists by partnering with non-film community organizations across four regions, providing event management training and curriculum.
Denae Peters, senior program officer at Perspective Fund, describes their new Envision Impact Lab as a pilot program complementing core programs that fund production, impact activities, and organizations. The Envision Lab has two tracks: one for film and campaign support (four awarded projects each received US$200,000), and one for tools and initiatives (three awarded projects received US$150,000 to $300,000). Denae says Envision became Perspective’s widest open call, with a total of 230 applications. Program officer Andrew Catauro adds that the Lab featured a two-day convening of both tracks, with projects receiving collective consultancies and mentorships.
Jon-Sesrie Goff, Ford Foundation JustFilms’ senior program officer, discusses a new distribution learning cohort launching later in 2026. JustFilms earmarked US$2 million to pilot an initiative that supports six organizations around distribution learning. Each organization receives three-year general operating or core support, plus wraparound support for peer learning. The process started with an invite-only LOI for approximately 40 organizations nominated from field peers, and was reviewed internally by colleagues at Ford outside of JustFilms. In the following conversation, Jon’s program officer colleague Paulina Suarez, listened in while on childcare duties.
The first of these funds to launch, the British Film Institute’s (BFI) Audience Projects Fund, joined by email with the participation of senior manager Sarah-Jane Meredith. A mix of grants and recoupable grants, the fund is the only BFI mechanism resolutely focused on audiences, delivered by the BFI National Lottery funding. The process to establish it was complex and covered many BFI departments making the case to the BFI executives and receiving approval from the board of trustees. Between April 2023 and March 2026, an average of 12 distribution awards were made each year, with an average award of £45,961. In 2026, the fund established a new element around immersive projects with a focus on narrative storytelling, addressing the absence of a defined route to UK audiences.
This roundtable is edited for length from a Zoom conversation and emailed responses.
KARIN CHIEN: Tell us a bit about the specific problem that your fund or program is designed to solve. What are the specific outcomes it’s designed to do?
SARAH-JANE MEREDITH, British Film Institute’s Audience Projects Fund: The fund was set up to ensure audiences were centered in any supported project and to ensure audiences are representative of the UK population. We also wanted to reduce historic barriers (economic, geographic) faced by audiences, as well as historic barriers faced by organizations applying for public funds, hence the smaller pilot awards.
This fund is different from other BFI funds in that it supports nationally significant exhibition and distribution projects firmly focused on being audience-driven: we don’t just support a film festival, but one that clearly knows who it wants to reach and does so via curation, marketing, and partnerships. The other mechanism delivered by this team is the BFI Film Audience Network which has similar audience aims but is rooted in the local.
JON-SESRIE GOFF, Ford Foundation JustFilm’s Distribution Learning Cohort: We felt like there was a weak and inequitable system for distribution and especially for support around thinking of long term value of outcomes. We see that distribution is fragmented, under capitalized, and often extractive, and there are limited ways that philanthropy can intervene. That’s why our support is general operating support to mostly charitable 501(c)(3) organizations.
It also comes under this strategy umbrella of new economic models, a line of work across our Creativity and Free Expression teams. For JustFilms specifically, we’re trying to solve questions around filmmakers and culture producers building sustainable livelihoods—what models allow value to circulate beyond the initial sale or festival run, and how do we shift power within the ecosystem, especially after the disruption of tech companies and the interplay between audience and artists.
DENAE PETERS, Perspective Fund’s Envision Impact Lab: On the film side, retaining funds for experimentation around distribution or impact was a lofty thing funders had been expecting of filmmakers, if, for example, they still had production budget gaps. We wanted to encourage applications from those with essentially fully funded production budgets, and to offer what we called major campaign financing—to ensure they had clear hypotheses for their impact campaigns. The gap we were trying to fill was how few spaces are able to look at spheres of potential influence and learning, and to make clear that we’re also willing to fund needs as they come up, in order to support having learning be at the forefront throughout the grant cycle.
ANDREW CATAURO, Perspective Fund’s Envision Impact Lab: We also wanted to offer tools at an economy of scale to a cohort with enough shared traits to deploy tools at the same time, at the same stage, and generate extrapolatable learnings.
KARIN CHIEN: I really appreciate the deep dive into logistics, because that’s key. It’s really the question of how do you fund new models and innovation.
LALITA KRISHNA, Canadian Independent Screen Fund’s Connect: I think the real problem we’re all trying to fix is that the traditional distribution models are broken, right? They don’t work. They probably never worked. There is a demand for good-quality work being made, but we seem to be failing in the way we are reaching those audiences. We believe that filmmakers themselves come with an intrinsic knowledge—especially in documentary—of who their audiences are. They create these films with a passion for the topic and subject, so they know their audiences. That’s why Connect[’s first prong] is important: so filmmakers are able to fund their own experiments in how they want to reach their audiences.
KARIN CHIEN: As Jon said, it’s about the sustainability of the makers all the way to how audiences access this work.
AMY HOBBY, Distribution Advocates’ FilmADE Fund: When we were first developing the idea a few years ago, we weren’t seeing a lot of fresh or outside-the-box thinking. People seemed entrenched in legacy models. The most core idea of FilmADE was: how can we incentivize experimentation and innovation in distribution? How can we support those distributing the riskiest films? And there was a lack of transparency to solve: it’s easy to share successes, but film teams rarely share challenges or things don’t go well, which doesn’t help learning in the field. By working with film teams and distributors to share data as transparently as possible, inclusive of failed attempts, we hope that we can dampen the repetition of bad models and encourage iteration based on even modest successes.
SONYA CHILDRESS, Color Congress’s Elev8Docs: Our members think about the ways in which the formal distribution system failed the filmmakers of color who they serve, and failed to reach the diverse audiences those filmmakers aimed to engage. They considered lots of different interventions, including a streaming platform built by or taken over by the membership. Over a few months, our members coalesced around an idea that, rather than build something new, they wanted to learn something new. The problem wasn’t a lack of screens; it was a lack of visibility of available films and the challenge of reaching audiences—which is a marketing problem.
We worked with Distribution Advocates to design eight experiments. The two top challenges were cultural gaps in mainstream marketing of films about the experiences or contributions of people of color and the limited data on diverse audience preferences around nonfiction film. So through the work of Distribution Advocates, we coalesced on eight hypotheses that we aimed to test. Read more about the 8 hypotheses here.
We wanted data to prove that culturally nuanced marketing strategies work and we wanted data around how different audiences of color, including younger and older audiences, respond. We were starting to get really nuanced data that marketers simply don’t often track.
KARIN CHIEN: This next question is mostly for the three funds that are furthest along, towards completion. For Elev8Docs, FilmADE, and Connect, can you talk about any moments of success, or any learnings so far?
SONYA CHILDRESS, Elev8Docs: We believe this was a success because we allowed our members to experiment. For many of these filmmakers like Bernardo Ruiz, especially with older work, this was a net positive: to have their films brought back, to be compensated to participate, and to see what happened when someone else ran with their film and tried to engage new audiences. We’re getting feedback that this was a validating and positive experience, and gave filmmakers new insight that there are eager audiences for their work across communities of color, of different generations and regions. It didn’t matter whether the film was 20 years old or five.
For the strategists, many of these folks are hired guns who are paid to deliver results. We paid them to experiment. If it didn’t work, they were still contributing enormously valuable insight to the field. Time—about three months each, which was too short for some experiments—was our limiting factor. But even within those three months, especially for the digital world, you can get data back and try something new each day: change the messaging, change the images, run it again.
We learned there is enormous audience appetite for nonfiction film. We learned that trusted messengers, whether online content creators or conveners like our member organizations, are the right kinds of people to engage audiences. That sense of trust, the culture-bridging that those individuals do, attracts new audiences to work they may have never heard of. The audiences trust that messenger or that convenor, and they’ll come sight unseen. That level of cultural specificity (we think of it like the Bad Bunny Super Bowl performance) makes people respond when they feel they’re being spoken to in their own language, and when you’re bringing them culturally validating work.
Docs still play a really important role in our civic commons. They’re largely a litmus test for the health of our multiracial democracy. When people are seeking out this work, it also says something about what they want to see reflected back about the America they live in, what they’re not seeing in other places—that they’re seeking out reflections of their own communities.
SAHAR DRIVER, Elev8Docs: Across the board we also noticed a real appetite to meet in person. It’s not enough to watch beautiful work that speaks to your experiences. In a moment of extreme trauma in this country, people are hungry for in-person spaces. The promise of being galvanized and feeling some hope, some joy, while leaning into something difficult is something that people are looking for and wanting to do together.
And the censorship our members navigated, from the algorithmic changes to the repressive environment that shaped decision-making also shaped almost every experiment. Archives were interested in A Litany for Survival, for example, but rights holders were scared about some traditional and university spaces. Our strategists understood how to navigate that. That’s when real partnerships become important rather than transactional relationships.
KARIN CHIEN: Those are incredible learnings and wins. Lalita, your program also finished the first year. Can you talk about any moments of success or any learnings?
LALITA KRISHNA, Connect: When we started this program, I said we need to run it for three years in order to get some real meaningful data to really have some deep learnings that we can actually implement. We know that after Covid, audiences have not been going out as much to public spaces. For us to have had 12 screenings across Canada, with 60 to 80 percent of theaters filled in small regions—that itself is a huge success. In terms of survey responses, we’ve had about 65 to 85 percent response rates, which is pretty good. We wanted to understand not just the films, but the experience, such as what the barriers were to attending, because we want people to come back.
I really like the term trusted messengers, and it’s where we need to really work now. We kicked off our program with a presentation from We Are Parable, who’ve had seven years of doing amazing work in the UK promoting Black content for Black audiences. They were so generous in sharing a huge PowerPoint of all that they learned.
KARIN CHIEN: That theme of learning and knowledge sharing and transparency keeps coming back. FilmADE is about two thirds to completion. Amy, can you share any moments of success or any learning so far?
AMY HOBBY, FilmADE: We’ve been pretty successful in getting filmmakers to share. Our Substack has published incredibly detailed case studies from our grantees, including a lot of data. We now have over 5000 subscribers on Substack so the information seems to be connecting with other film folks. The challenge is that transparency requires a muscle that hasn’t been used before and it wasn’t instinctual for the grantees. In the business we are told to not talk about budget, or tell trade secrets. FilmADE had to push and also collaborate on new ways to present the data so readers could best understand the results.
There was also a change in applications over time. The very first applications didn’t have a lot of insight into what a distribution experiment might be. Over the course of FilmADE, we saw a real rise in the quality of applications and the understanding of basic distribution information.
KARIN CHIEN: Denae and Andrew, the Envision Impact Lab launched late last year. Has there been anything that has surprised you in designing, creating, and so far running this lab?
DENAE PETERS, Envision Impact Lab: What was hard to envision coming to life was how a cohort of film projects and impact tools would operate together. I’m pleasantly surprised by how generative it’s already been. The tools projects have direct access to a cohort of filmmakers actively running impact campaigns—their ideal users—who they’re building trust with. And for the film teams, they’re challenged to zoom out to the potential learnings for the entire ecosystem and for those trying to craft best practices for filmmakers like them. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how effective the shared experience has been, as opposed to two separate tracks. Andrew, what surprised you?
ANDREW CATAURO, Envision Impact Lab: Here’s a law of physics: an object in motion stays in motion. My fear was that in applications, people say they’re willing to tear things down and build them up, but once you’re in the washing machine and the cycle starts, how willing will people be to stop? Filmmakers have inherited a lot of tools that weren’t purpose-built for their community commitments. If we’re here to help them build those tools, they’re willing to unplug from things that had momentum when given another option. The willingness is there.
DENAE PETERS, Envision Impact Lab: The other surprise was how concrete we needed to be about what we meant by experimentation and innovation. Something as simple as “propose an innovative or experimental impact tool” is definitely not clear enough criteria. I’m not going to say that we totally landed it, but what I came away with was it’s about being clear about our intention while leaving space for applicants’ own interpretations of innovation and experimentation. Asking questions in the application that revealed how they approach failure, for instance, helped us get a better sense of how they define and learn from those setbacks in their work. Leaving breathing room for that is what experimentation, at its best, can do.
KARIN CHIEN: We talk about that all the time at Distribution Advocates and I’m going to come back to that. Jon, I know the distribution learning cohort is so new and it’s still emerging, but has anything surprised you so far?
JON-SESRIE GOFF, Distribution Learning Cohort: It’s early for us. Given the somewhat blind selection process, the geographic diversity of the grantees was striking. With one exception, we don’t have any on the domestic coasts. We have one in the Midwest, one in the South in the U.S., and the rest are international, global-south organizations. That wasn’t intentional when we designed it. I’m curious how they’ll engage with each other and what learnings can be exchanged across such a diverse geographic spread.
KARIN CHIEN: Following up on Denae’s point about the idea of innovation, I’m going to ask how you think about innovation with your funds. You’re all mandated to have public benefits—is innovation enough? There’s learning and field knowledge and transparency and education layered into all of your programs. How does innovation intersect with the problem you’re trying to solve?
JON-SESRIE GOFF, Distribution Learning Cohort: The goal is that innovation leads to greater equity and sustainability. Even though we keep being told that the sustainability of artists’ livelihoods is not a public benefit, we believe otherwise. Pair that with the outputs of learning and field building and shared infrastructure, and I think that is the public benefit generated from the innovation.
DENAE PETERS, Envision Impact Lab: We spent a lot of time thinking about what this would mean for Perspective Fund. Because for us, it’s also an experiment to offer a more complex level of hands-on engagement with projects as a funder. We need to learn whether that’s helpful, neutral, or disruptive. In the end, it wouldn’t be enough just to have a lab centered on innovation because we’ve selected seven projects, and there’s no world where any one project can address every challenging dynamic impact-driven filmmakers face. Innovation alone is not enough. And as I referred to earlier, everyone defines innovation differently, so it could never end there.
ANDREW CATAURO, Envision Impact Lab: We haven’t done a good enough job defining just how much private benefit there is, where we can point to our own efforts at innovation as a defense of public benefit. Maybe in year two, we’ll get there.
AMY HOBBY, FilmADE: When Karin and I were doing R&D—and thank you, Perspective Fund, for helping fund our R&D—we talked to a lot of people outside the business about innovation and how to motivate it. We talked to the BFI Audience Projects Fund early on, and they gave us a heads-up: innovation is the hardest thing to define and instigate. Just getting people to think differently isn’t always easy.
KARIN CHIEN: Lalita, for Connect was innovation less a mandate than the training?
LALITA KRISHNA, Connect: Innovation wasn’t really a driving element for Connect. Everything we were doing was innovative to an extent. For us it was more about being audience-driven. Fortunately for us, finding alternative ways of distribution has become a buzzword in Canada right now. A Cineplex executive said people don’t come to theaters because Canadian films aren’t as good—so the field is responding. We’re a year ahead of many. There’ll be a lot more experimentation coming out of Canada now.
KARIN CHIEN: That’s really great to hear. Sonya and Sahar, you spoke already about experimentation. Is there anything you want to add to how core that was to Elev8Docs?
SAHAR DRIVER, Elev8Docs: In each of the experiments, we tried to position the strategists as resources for the broader field. Chana Ewing wants to start a creators program helping to train filmmakers around what a symbiotic relationship [between filmmakers and content creators] can look like. Tracy Nguyen Chung has a lot to say about the press environment in this moment. Every single strategist has something they can offer about what kind of implementation can be useful. That can be a next step.
SONYA CHILDRESS, Elev8Docs: The challenge for Color Congress is that while there’s great value in experimenting on our members’ behalf—for them not to hold the labor of experimentation, but to be its recipients and guides—Color Congress is not going to turn into a distribution entity. And whenever Color Congress does something, there’s this question: will y’all solve something? Keep it going. What’s the 2.0? We’re already working on the next set of learning experiments that are completely unrelated to distribution.
So who holds the work moving forward? Does it fall back on filmmakers who are increasingly seeing filmmaking as financially untenable? We have amazing strategists who had the time of their lives experimenting and can certainly monetize what they’ve learned. Will the field pay for that? Can the filmmakers within our ecosystem hire them? We had a healthy budget to hire them and paid them what they deserve. Our members may not have that.
We play a unique role as an intermediary. The tricky part is building something and then stepping out of that house and asking someone else to tend to the garden and keep cleaning while we’re building the next thing across the street. That’s what we grapple with and is a downside of just being in experimentation mode.
DENAE PETERS, Envision Impact Lab: I think there’s a big difference between folks engaging with these funds knowing that they’re time-limited, versus committing to taking on the responsibility of what they’ve crafted forever. For the Envision Impact Lab, it certainly is easier to imagine on the tool side, but for the filmmakers who are so heavily engaged in their impact campaigns, this is an unsolved challenge about trying to make sure that we’re leaning into that innovation and energy, but also recognizing that not every filmmaker wants to create a marketing or distribution firm on behalf of their peers.
JON-SESRIE GOFF, Distribution Learning Cohort: Not everyone knows what’s happening in different places. And so if you take the Moviementa movement where they’re basically trying to empower exhibitors as integral practitioners, and it’s different than Arthouse Convergence, and you pair it with a Multitude Films or Sunshine Cinema, something can happen. What happens in the documentary space and nonprofit space, where people are able to convene and reflect and strategize, doesn’t always happen in the narrative independent cinema space. And so it’s good to sprinkle some of that into other areas where philanthropy may not always be present.
SARAH-JANE MEREDITH, Audience Projects Fund: Innovation is a public benefit if it resonates with audiences and not just innovation for the sake of innovation. There are really creative ideas from people and they should be supported where there is a route to audiences or to use the funding to take creative risks. We are not in itself an innovation fund—the BFI has other funds to support that (Creative Challenge Fund). We don’t include education and training in the strict sense but we make sure people have a deeper engagement via panels and Q&As, and we also support a number of mentoring schemes.
KARIN CHIEN: Because you’re funders, a lot is asked of you. In one sentence, what would you like to see from the field? What is something that you would like to see in this space of new models, innovation, or distribution learnings?
SONYA CHILDRESS, Elev8Docs: We need new compensation models for films in the public interest. This idea of commercial viability of nonfictions in this moment for work that is so necessary is not working. There has to be some new models for compensation for films that are contributing to our democracy in vital and important ways.
AMY HOBBY, FilmADE Fund: Plus one to that. And a protocol to better collaborate across efforts, platforms and programs. A place to hold and retain all of the information and learnings. People are collaborating over here and over there, and the data is not being retained in any sort of comprehensive way.
ANDREW CATAURO, Envision Impact Lab: I would point to Karin’s organization of us —to adapt our thoughts into a series of questions and put me in the room with five other funds—and to what this will produce, to inspire other people in our field to put the same amount of effort into coordinating and synthesizing for funders, who are notoriously unable to do that extra step.
DENAE PETERS, Envision Impact Lab: More ideas focused on in-person engagement opportunities for audiences and breaking out of focusing solely on trying to navigate how challenging the digital streaming landscape is. Reorienting back to the in-person experience, and where innovation is needed for filmmakers and their partners to better connect with audiences in real life.
LALITA KRISHNA, Connect: I see collaborative models that could come out of threads of this conversation. There’s a roster of experts coming out of Elev8Docs who’ve gained this knowledge, but filmmakers don’t have the resources to hire them. Maybe CISF, once our funds are available, could focus on funding filmmakers to be able to hire them. That’s not what legacy funds do. Maybe that’s what we need: after the film is done, funding the person to get it out to audiences. Not the traditional sales agent or distributor, but someone with deep knowledge of what communities need, who will make sure the work gets to the right audiences.
SARAH-JANE MEREDITH, Audience Projects Fund: More funding is always needed! But having a limited amount, sufficient but not luxurious, means we have to make the right decisions about what to fund. We are always delighted when we see a completely original idea from an organization we’ve not supported before—where they have spent time considering what they actually want to achieve and how public funds can achieve that.
JON-SESRIE GOFF, Distribution Learning Cohort: We need more resources, specifically, more diverse and patient capital that allows these initiatives and models to incubate over time. Plus one to the collaboration and coordination across initiatives, but also across financiers, funders, and sectors. The hybrid funding mechanisms are also necessary and have to be intentional. There are drastic differences in where people are starting from and in ideological frameworks. Whatever bridges need to be crossed, we need to start building them.