After losing its biggest account, Access Media Productions changes leadership and locations.

Since he took over as executive director at Access Media Productions in August, following the loss of the nonprofit’s contract with the City of Monterey in April, Mike Buffo has been making big changes to keep AMP afloat.

“Our organization is facing severe financial trouble,” says Buffo, a producer, cinematographer and director. “The Monterey contract was 54 percent of our revenue. We did all of their meetings for many years… So we have been pruning the weeds around our expenses and evaluating everything we do.”

The City of Monterey contracted with AMP since 1998 to record and stream its public meetings. But given the city’s ongoing structural deficit, it ended its relationship with the longtime partner earlier this year and contracted with the Monterey County Office of Education instead, saving the city about $150,000 annually.

Since taking the reins of AMP in the aftermath, Buffo has been finding traditional ways to cut expenses, like reducing staff, while concurrently working on strategies to make the nonprofit more attractive to new clients, including redesigning AMP’s logo (without using AI, Buffo says), revising its website and creating an online portal for clients to request consultations, among other technical improvements.

“Our cities see us in one way, but we’d like them to see us in more than one way,” Buffo says. “The one way is that we are the technicians who are reliable and that they need to be compliant with their transparency demands but we’d like for them to also see us as documentarians for city activities: cultural events, parades, announcements and PSAs. We want to expand our roles, because if we don’t we’re just going to die.”

Buffo has brought on new clients that he worked with through his video production company, House of 8 Media, including the Carmel Public Library Foundation, Wholehearted Chorus and American Institute of Architects Monterey Bay. He is also working with an AMP client, the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, to develop job training programs for students and a pilot program that features livestreams of local high school sports.

“We have students serve in broadcast roles, as the camera operators and the sideline correspondents, in collaboration with AMP staff as mentors,” he says. “The students get volunteer hours, and we produce a multi-camera livestream for[National Federation of State High School Associations], as well as for our register portal, Channel 27 and Vimeo.”

The biggest move for AMP since the leadership change is a physical one. The nonprofit moved from its longtime headquarters on Tyler Street in Monterey to a former elementary school in Seaside, which also houses the nonprofit All-In Monterey County.

“We’re setting up a couple of classrooms and taking over the library,” Buffo says. “My hope is that this will be a gathering space for training for youth and the public at large.”