Elaine Faye
THE CLIENT:
Elaine Faye is a singer-songwriter known for her soulful voice and emotive songwriting. She released music that blends elements of pop, soul, and R&B. She was also one of my closest friends, former roommate, and k-pop co-host. Sadly, she passed away in 2022 after four long years fighting breast cancer. She is greatly missed.
In 2020, before the world shut down, Elaine Faye reached out to all her closest friends asking for help with treatment and fundraising. Over time that group of people led to the core group of women who stood by her side. We physically cared for her, took her to treatment, managed her social media, created fundraising campaigns for her, and ran her online shop.
It was definitely a team effort. But so worth it. We believe that every campaign and dollar donated and encouraging comment sent added healing to her life. She got to live a longer life because of the people who rallied around her. And for that I’m so grateful.
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Photos by Joanne Garcia. Graphic design by Brooke Estin.
Elaine came to us needing to fundraise a lot of money for specialized treatment. It was urgent and so we had to brainstorm on how to raise money QUICKLY. Which is hard to do since it was April 2020 when we decided to launch a 30-day livestream concert chain with a handful of musicians from Elaine’s circle of friends.
But that’s the idea we came up with. We recruited artists to join, we scheduled them out, created social media assets, brought awareness to Elaine’s case, and set viewers up to send her donations. It was amazing seeing how people showed up. We are thankful that anyone would give their time for this cause.
Photos by Joanne Garcia, Elaine Faye, and Luis Munoz. Graphic design by Allison Sano.
Elaine’s health had its highs and lows. And every once in awhile we’d have to go on a mission to raise funds for whatever treatment she needed. In March of 2022, Elaine’s good friend and band mate, Luis Munoz, donated a gorgeous custom electric guitar. And so we created a raffle around it.
You can see some of the social media videos in action below:
With all the fundraising that we did, we knew that it was important to keep all the donors updated on Elaine’s health and status of funds and how they were used. And so we made a point to create newsletters along with the social media efforts. This way we kept people in the loop on how things were going as well as other ways to give such as her online vintage shop and Amazon wish list.
Photos by Joanne Garcia and Luis Munoz. Newsletter copy by Joanne Garcia and Elaine Faye.
Elaine was a lover of fashion. She was known for having impeccable taste and her style was incredible. She had the ability to make the weirdest things work well together. And honestly she could pull any look off.
So when she told us that she wanted to build an online shop to sell vintage clothing as a ways to fundraise, we supported her. Elaine wanted to model all the pieces. I photographed her. Allison came in to assist and handle editing and fulfillment. At times we’d do a big vintage sale push and she’d raise over $3000 at a time.
I wish we spent more time and energy on this part of fundraising but it was hard to manage in between treatments. What we did end up doing made for a great catalog of fashion photos of her. I may compile that into a photo book one day.
Photos by Joanne Garcia. Graphic design by Elaine Faye.
Detail & interior design photos taken at Kristen Hall’s home.
Even though Elaine fought with everything inside of her, she finally lost her battle with breast cancer in November 2022. She lasted a LOT longer than what any of us thought she would. A lot of that is thanks to her drive and tenacity, the incredible staff at both medical facilities that took care of her, the bandmates and friends that rallied around Elaine to drive her to treatment or buy her really expensive groceries, the amazing nonprofits like LOVEHEALS and Nightbirde Foundation that helped cover bills, and the amazing people who donated to her cause over the years.
We ended up throwing her the biggest celebratory memorial service at one of the Hollywood venues that she used to perform at. We managed all the logistics, created all the social media assets, organized all the food, coordinated and setup the livestream, and cut together a tribute video.
We celebrated with lots of music and Creole food. Just the way Elaine would have liked it.
The photos and videos used in the tribute video was compiled from files that were collected in a Dropbox folder that we set up. The livestream featured performances from Alisha Roney, Luke Strand, and her band, Big Bang.