Reliant Creative - A Creative Agency for Ministries

How many of us have witnessed powerful stories unfold right before our eyes, testifying to what an awesome Creator we have? Most of us can probably think of a couple of scenes right off the top of our heads. Now, how many of those stories have been creatively captured and shared to inspire others to action? Probably not all that many.

Ministry organizations are busy doing ministry and don’t often have time to tell their stories. But God is at work around the globe in powerful ways! And stories inspire action.

Reliant Creative partners with Christian ministries to tell engaging stories that mobilize the Church. This creative agency’s core purpose is to bring glory to God by telling His stories and inspiring the church to action.

“In today’s digital landscape, to be effective and break through the noise and build a brand around storytelling, we have to be producing content at crazy rates. It’s insane!” exclaims Zach Leighton, founder and principal creative of the agency. “So how do you break through the noise and compete with the Nikes, Netflixes, and Teslas of the world who are dominating the [social media] space? That’s what we are trying to help ministries figure out.”

“We do brand development, messaging strategy, research, campaign collateral, content strategy, website design development, photo/video storytelling, graphic design...anything in the creative and digital space. We’re a creative agency. We’re a digital agency.”

When Zach graduated from college in 2010, he knew he wanted to be a photographer. While studying business, he had signed up for a photography and film class and fallen in love with the medium. Right out of college, he started a photography company with the vision to give away services and content for free to ministries. However, he quickly realized he needed a different business model in order to be sustainable. He continued building his personal photography business for the next few years, putting the “free for ministries” idea on hold.

In 2014, Zach rebranded his original photography company to Reliant Creative and obtained 501c3 status. At first, he focused on complete rebrands for ministries, designing new websites and filling them chock-full of story-driven content. He still gave away work to ministries for free and asked donors to cover costs. But he soon ran into the same problem he had discovered with his first venture...ministries didn’t know what to do with all the content after it was delivered to them. Zach found himself trying to build his other for-profit companies bigger in order to fund Reliant Creative projects and was quickly becoming exhausted. The handout model to ministries wasn’t working. He realized he needed to invite donors to partner with him and change the business model.

Until this point, Reliant Creative had been a side venture for Zach. Finally, in October 2019, he jumped all in, going full time with the agency and fundraising his salary.

Since Reliant Creative is still a relatively small non-profit, they are limited in how many clients they can help at any given time. They conduct business under two main investment models - services paid in full or a hybrid partnership, through which ministries can receive services at a reduced cost if they meet certain qualifications.

In the hybrid or “shared” model, Reliant Creative comes alongside a ministry and trains them on how to use the content. “When we partner with and take on a ministry client, we require investment of some kind. Depending on what the ministry needs and what those creative services actually cost to get that work done, the ministry invests what they can and then our organization fills in the gap. There is a grant application process for that,” explains Zach. “The ministry would need to align doctrinally with our beliefs. There is an element of the ministry needing to prove that they will take what we create and go execute on it well. We try not to invest a bunch of donated or granted creative time in a ministry that will just sit on a new website, brand development, or graphic design elements.”

“When a ministry comes to us looking for a complete rebranding, messaging strategy, and website development and wants to pay in full for those services, we are able to get to work on those projects right away. And those ministries that are larger clients and can afford the creative services in full, some of the profit from those projects gets invested back into a pool towards the projects of smaller ministries.”

Reliant Creative does more than just provide production services. Through their website, anyone can access free marketing and strategy resources, The Ministry Growth Show podcast, and free storytelling and marketing courses. Check it out!