{"id":3733,"date":"2026-08-18T04:17:58","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T04:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adeptcs.net\/sp\/we-went-in-to-talk-retainer-we-left-with-camayah-credits\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T04:17:58","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T04:17:58","slug":"we-went-in-to-talk-retainer-we-left-with-camayah-credits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adeptcs.net\/sp\/we-went-in-to-talk-retainer-we-left-with-camayah-credits\/","title":{"rendered":"We Went In To Talk Retainer. We Left With Camayah Credits"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We went into that meeting at Cambridge Community Center thinking we were closing a retainer. We left with something we hadn\u2019t built yet.<\/p>\n

By then, Darrin Korte<\/a> already knew our work. It started with one turkey drive in 2025. Then Center Court League. Then the Sisters of the Center Awards Brunch. Then F5, The Hip Hop Transformation\u2019s album release, documentary premiere, and panel discussion rolled into one night. Four events, four different kinds of coverage, and every one of them ended up somewhere, CCC\u2019s website, their impact report<\/a>, their social channels<\/a>. That\u2019s not a testimonial we\u2019re telling ourselves. It\u2019s just what happened, one shoot at a time, until it stopped looking like a series of shoots and started looking like a relationship.<\/p>\n

So when we sat down to talk about making it official, a real retainer, the proposal we brought was built the way most retainer proposals are built. A set number of events a month. A price attached to it.<\/p>\n

Darrin liked pieces of it. He was honest about the pieces he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

There are only so many photos that make it into a newsletter. Only so much room in an annual report. He said it plainly, he was worried we\u2019d end up there just to be there, filling a package he was paying for whether or not that month actually called for it. Not because he doubted the work. Because he understood his own organization\u2019s rhythm better than any proposal we could hand him, and a fixed package doesn\u2019t know the difference between a month with three major events and a month with none.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the part of the conversation that stayed with me. Not the pushback itself, we\u2019d heard versions of it before, but what it actually pointed to. We were trying to sell Darrin a shape that fit our business model, not his.<\/p>\n

The conversation kept going past photography. A website came up. So did a real push on social media, something beyond what one photographer with a camera can carry alone. Darrin wasn\u2019t asking for a bigger package. He was describing an organization with more going on than any single tier could hold, and telling us, without meaning to, exactly what the offer needed to become.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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We left that meeting and started over. Instead of a set number of events, we built a credit balance. Instead of telling an executive director what their month would include, we let them decide. Photo one month, video the next, an interview when a donor ask comes up, whatever the organization\u2019s calendar actually calls for instead of whatever fit neatly into a package we\u2019d designed before we knew what CCC needed.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where Camayah Credits came from. Not a feature we thought up in a planning session. A direct answer to a real conversation with a real executive director who was honest enough to tell us our first idea was wrong for his organization.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re still working out what an ongoing partnership with CCC looks like on paper. But the system that conversation produced is how we work with every organization we partner with now, whatever tier fits them. Darrin didn\u2019t just become someone who trusts us with a camera. He\u2019s part of the reason the offer itself exists the way it does.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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If your organization is outgrowing one-off bookings and you\u2019re trying to figure out what an ongoing partnership should actually include, that\u2019s the conversation we want to have. Not a proposal built in a vacuum. See how the credit system works<\/a>, or tell us where you\u2019re starting.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We went into that meeting at Cambridge Community Center thinking we were closing a retainer. We left with something we hadn\u2019t built yet. By then, Darrin Korte already knew our [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[638,639,640,626,641],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-retainer-proposal","category-an-executive-director-who-told-us-the-truth-about-his-newsletter-space","category-and-the-real-reason-camayah-credits-exists-instead-of-a-fixed-package","category-behind-the-work","category-partnerships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adeptcs.net\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adeptcs.net\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adeptcs.net\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adeptcs.net\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adeptcs.net\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adeptcs.net\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adeptcs.net\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adeptcs.net\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adeptcs.net\/sp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}