Hi, I'm David Rice.
I’ve worn many hats over the years, identifying interchangeably (and often concurrently) as a musician, photographer, composer, producer, digital designer, and filmmaker. On especially good days, I fancy myself an artist.
I've been told my abilities are an unusual combination of imaginative big-picture insight and detail-oriented execution, each of which I enjoy immensely. Somewhere along the way I've even earned a Clio Award and two Emmy nominations—welcome compensation for the many projects that never even got off the ground!
The sections below correspond with the four key classes of qualifications you've included in your job description. Where applicable, I've included examples of specific skills you're seeking; the website you're on now offers numerous other examples that can speak more generally to my capabilities and qualifications.
I'd also consider myself conversationally fluent in the peculiar politics and sensitivities unique to foundations and nonprofits. Past clients include the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation; St. David’s Foundation; Children's Cancer Research Fund; and nonprofit newsroom the Texas Observer. Currently, I'm working with the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, for whom I've created a program website and multiple videos around their innovative new consortium, College Presidents for Civic Preparedness.
Content Development & Execution
On this site, you'll find numerous examples of content creation, and/or you can scan the bullets below to get a sense of my capabilities.
Digital Platform Support
Like everyone else, we had to radically reimagine our business in order to survive the 2020 lockdown. We'd just begun production of our fifth season of Small Business Revolution, with three weeks of footage in the can from Fredonia, New York. For our Fortune 500 client, canceling the show seemed a foregone conclusion. With the livelihood of eight employees and a two dozen contractors on the line, we had to act fast to keep the series alive.
Our client agreed to keep the contract in place while we quickly produced a spinoff web series at our own expense. Small Business, Big Heart highlighted mom-and-pop businesses across the country who'd found innovative ways to serve their communities and stay afloat in the early weeks of quarantine.
Since most of us expected the pandemic to pass in a matter of weeks, we were in a race to release episodes before they became irrelevant. Given the logistical and technical constraints of sheltering in place, we knew that project and media management would make or break the series.
Using a combination of Airtable, Zoom, Zapier, and Dropbox, I designed and coded a wholly automated, soup to nuts system that handled sourcing these stories; presenting a new batch of candidates daily to our client for consideration; assigning priority stories using a rating system; pitching our first-choice business owners to participate in this upstart series; scheduling Zoom interviews involving multiple parties across different time zones; guiding our subjects and hosts through capturing their interviews with external cameras and phones; giving them clear and convenient instructions for uploading the video files; transcoding this self-shot footage to match the format of the native Zoom recordings; and finally, compiling all this raw material in a standardized file system and delivering it to each episode's assigned editors.
Much of what I've shared above speaks to my experience with graphic design.
Specifically, I'm fluent in the Adobe Creative Suite, comfortable in Canva, and gracious but effective in my enforcement of a given brand's standards.
Instead of sharing specific examples, I invite you again to further explore this website and consider the various ways I can add value to your own work.
Project Coordination & Administrative Support
It may not be the sexiest thing I can do well, but I always jump at the chance to devise any system that minimizes churn. By no definition am I a computer scientist, but I've spent more hours than I care to admit hacking around with Airtable, Google Sheets, Zapier, Wordpress, and various calendar, scheduling, and email apps. I've gradually developed enough skills with these prosumer platforms to accomplish whatever creative workflow I believe suits the situation. My tinkering served me well when I was abruptly called to create the automations I describe in the Digital Platforms section above, and I've since built numerous similar systems.
Oh—you mentioned pitch decks. In addition to the countless decks I've built on my own behalf, I've recently been hired strictly to consult with clients on content, flow, and design for capital campaign and investor decks. I prefer to build in Keynote, which, mercifully, is wholly compatible with Power Point — and mostly cooperative with Google Slides. I'll include examples below.
