The Pay Transparency Project (PTP) is a community-driven database that offers nonfiction video professionals timely insight into hiring trends and pay parity practices, while tracking structural industry shifts and recommendations. This grassroots initiative grew from a collective commitment to advancing equity, justice, inclusion, and transparency across the documentary and nonfiction video fields.

PTP supports storytellers at all career stages, from emerging professionals to industry veterans navigating freelance work. Department heads and hiring executives are also encouraged to contribute and use PTP to help strengthen standards and promote a more equitable, sustainable industry for all.

We are at a pivotal moment. Marginalized communities continue to be disproportionately impacted by inequitable workplace practices, and meaningful change requires reimagining how our industry operates. As we reexamine who is in front of and behind the camera, we must be intentional about how stories are told, who shapes them, and how filmmakers can build sustainable careers. Equitable pay, fair credit, and expanded access remain essential.

Origins

PTP was founded in 2019 by members of Video Consortium who were frustrated by the lack of pay transparency in nonfiction video. Inspired by the informal rate-sharing spreadsheets circulating among peers, they envisioned a central resource where professionals could share and access information to support sustainable careers. In 2022, Brown Girls Doc Mafia joined as an implementation partner. Together, VC and BGDM are building a coalition across the industry to advance equitable pay transparency in nonfiction media.

Join us and help build a more transparent future!