West Texas Counseling & Guidance’s 50th Anniversary: One Event, One Video, Eight Social Stories
West Texas Counseling & Guidance began fifty years ago in San Angelo, Texas, and has since grown into an organization with an ever-expanding footprint across Texas, New Mexico, and beyond. To mark the milestone, WTCG partnered with By The Stream Media to capture their 50th Anniversary celebration across several days of interviews with board members, staff, and leadership — building one event film made to play for donors immediately before WTCG’s fundraising ask at the celebration itself.
The Challenge
A 50th anniversary is a legacy moment — the kind of milestone a nonprofit only gets to celebrate once. WTCG needed a film that could do two things in the same room: honor five decades of service to the community, and set up the ask that would fund the next fifty years. The video was built to play immediately before WTCG made its case to donors at the anniversary event itself, so it had to earn real emotion, not just applause.
The Approach
Our team spent several days with WTCG’s board, staff, and leadership — including CEO Dusty McCoy, Board 3rd Vice President Tom Early, and Chief Operating Officer Janell Taylor, LCSW-S, along with members of the fundraising team — for one-on-one interviews about what the organization’s history means to them. That interview footage became the spine of the full event video, which WTCG played for their donors immediately before making their ask.
Extra Mileage from One Shoot
The event film was always going to be enough on its own — a room full of donors doesn’t need anything more than an honest, well-made video to feel the weight of fifty years of work. But because our team was already there capturing real interviews across several days, WTCG walked away with more than a single film. Those same interviews were also cut into eight short, vertical clips WTCG could run on their own social channels for months afterward — icing on the cake from a shoot that was already worth it for the big screen alone.
Footage That Keeps Working
Months after the event, WTCG’s team came back to the same footage twice more. When they needed a video tour of their multi-floor office space, the interviews and b-roll from the anniversary shoot gave them a head start. And when San Angelo Gives Day rolled around, they repurposed a clip into a short video they could text straight to their donor mailing list. Neither piece required a new production day — just a team willing to keep telling the story. Organizations rarely regret that, especially the ones that need to keep showing donors, not just telling them, how past support has made a difference.
What the Video Made Possible
The finished film played for WTCG’s donors immediately before their ask at the 50th anniversary event — giving fifty years of impact a face and a voice before the fundraising conversation even started. With the vision for raising money so beautifully expressed, WTCG was able to raise a record-breaking $134K! It was their most successful event!
Show Them, Don’t Just Tell Them
A milestone video is often treated as a one-and-done deliverable — made for a single screening and then filed away. The more valuable approach, and the one we used for WTCG, is to shoot with reuse in mind from the start: real interviews, captured over several days, built to carry the big moment first and keep working long after it. WTCG has already pulled a second video from that same footage for their office space, and a third for a donor mailing list on San Angelo Gives Day. Organizations rarely regret telling their story well — especially when they’ll need to show donors again how past support made a difference. If your organization has a milestone or fundraising event coming up, our team can build that same reuse into the plan before the cameras even roll.