The Situation

Global Press Institute (GPI) is an award-winning, high-impact social venture that uses journalism as a development tool to educate, employ and empower women in the developing world. The organization teaches them to produce high-quality local news coverage that elevates global awareness and ignites social change. GPI employs 135 women who are trained to cover topics such as environmental issues, violence against women, education, and regional conflict for the Global Press Journal, the news platform of GPI.

The Opportunity

Although GPI was syndicated through select outlets including NPR, Reuters and UPI, and numerous international outlets have published its articles, it was still struggling to gain widespread recognition through a structured syndication platform. With a relatively small grant, GPI proposed to develop an online syndication platform that would lead to catalytic results, increasing readership by as much as 300%, or as many as 15 million readers per year – all within a discrete, short period of time.

Open Road's Response

A $95,000 grant to hire a full-time Syndication Director for 15 months and build an online platform to enable any news organization to easily take GPI content. By increasing non-donation revenue, this project would become self-sustaining and self-scalable within the grant timeline.

Within 10-months of Open Road’s investment, GPI has secured more than 50 new syndication partners, its operating budget has nearly tripled, and readership has catapulted from 5 million per year to nearly 5 million per month across 80+ sites and news outlets.

To learn more visit: globalpressinstitute.co