1One thing you want funders to understand about what it takes to run a nonprofit or social enterprise in 2022 and beyond.

Bringing about deep, systemic change—which is what Children’s Rights does to protect kids’ human rights—doesn’t happen when funders simply fund for sustainability. It happens when they collaborate in a nonrestrictive, flexible way that supports innovation and informed risk-taking and allows us to react to change quickly and effectively—to grow and thrive, not just to survive.

2A source of inspiration and/or pride for you/your organization.

We’re inspired by the young adults we work with whose lived experience and expertise in child welfare has become a powerful force for transforming broken systems that perpetuate poverty, racism, abuse, and discrimination.

3One bold decision your organization made that proved to be worthwhile.

We have called out racism at the front-end of child welfare and committed ourselves to disrupt it through legal action and relentless advocacy to prevent the unnecessary surveillance, investigation, and separation of Black families. This is a top strategic priority that informs all our work and by which we evaluate our organizational impact.

4One wish you have for Open Road’s next 10 years.

For 10 years, Open Road has been a pioneer and is now uniquely positioned to lead a philanthropic movement to permanently shift to the less restrictive, flexible, and collaborative funding model adopted by many funders during COVID. The ability to respond and move quickly is critical when the unexpected happens. We know the next challenge is just around the bend.

5Anything else you want to share?

Thanks to Open Road, in a year of unprecedented hardship and threats to children’s health and safety, we were not only able to quickly respond to COVID and its effects on children but expand and marshal the largest advocacy docket in our history.

1One thing you want funders to understand about what it takes to run a social venture in 2022 and beyond.

Running a start-up requires constant curiosity and resilience. Curiosity to continue to test new ways to grow, and build your team, ops and business, and resilience to withstand all the learnings, and challenges.

2A source of inspiration and/or pride for you/your organization.

We are inspired every day by the lives we impact - from the expectant mom who needs to get to the hospital to deliver her baby to the motorcycle driver who has been in a road accident, to the grandfather who's had a stroke. Each and every day, we save individuals from previously impossible situations and give them peace of mind & lifesaving services.

3One bold decision your organization made that proved to be worthwhile.

We decided early on to transition from a pure tech business to one that leverages tech & humans to deliver healthcare services. This was a bold decision as we were effectively plugging ourselves into the middle of a critical process. We took on the role of being the central dispatch like a 911 / 999, which allowed us to better manage and allocate ambulances during an emergency. This was a bold decision and deviation from the Uber-like model, but one we have never looked back on. We see the immense value that our medical dispatchers have in leveraging the tech to deliver healthcare services, but being a voice on the other end of the line for emergency patients, providing care, life-saving directions, and peace of mind.

4One wish you have for Open Road's next 10 years.

My wish for ORA is that it's 10x bigger in 10 years. It's such a tremendous organization that has stepped in twice for our business during critical moments and transitions. It allowed us to keep our impact and business on track while we shored up the required resources to scale. My wish is for ORA to expand - fund more businesses in an even bigger way to leave an even larger imprint on social impact businesses and ultimately lives.

5Anything else you want to share?

Thank you! Without ORA, we would have been derailed several times at Flare. ORA has allowed us to be able to have continuity in our business during difficult moments, and has been such a solid partner to growing our business.

1One thing you want funders to understand about what it takes to run a social venture in 2022 and beyond.

To scale, impact must fundamentally drive revenue, and revenue further impact. Only models with impact & money integrated can scale while holding true to their Northstar!

2A source of inspiration and/or pride for you/your organization.

At the center of Jibu's culture is a mantra we have adopted from Shirzad Chamine: "Every challenge is a gift and an opportunity."

3One bold decision your organization made that proved to be worthwhile.

Despite not having a clear line of sight of where to get the resources to do it, we decided to continue to invest in growing our impact rather than focusing on short-term profitability or cash flow. Open Road Alliance allowed us to keep that plan on track!

4One wish you have for Open Road’s next 10 years.

My wish is that Open Road will keep its narrow focus exactly how it is now, but be able to do it at a much larger scale globally!

1What was the most difficult decision you faced as an organization when you reached out to Open Road during COVID-19?

Our most important challenge when the pandemic hit was finding ways to maintain contact with underserved communities with limited access to digital tools. Pro Mujer focused its digital presence on social media with widespread usability across Latin America to provide telemedicine and remote counseling sessions with great scalability through our chatbots.

2How has COVID-19 impacted the way you run your organization today?

Digital efforts which were designed to be temporary have become standardized in all of our operations through Latin America. We have expanded our chatbot system and have designed a series of live sessions with specialists to combat misinformation and myths, not only around COVID-19, but also regarding key diseases that could impact the severity of contagion. We have also organized monthly sessions with our medical staff across the region to disseminate the most up-to-date official information about COVID-19 and its treatment, as well as established a route to help our global staff diagnose and report any cases of the disease.

3Can you share more about what impact you have been able to keep on track since working with Open Road?

The COVID-19 and the diabetes type two risk calculator chatbots developed with the support of Open Road Alliance have served more than 13,500 people in Nicaragua and a little over 10% of them have received follow-up care by a medic, remotely or in-person.

4A source of inspiration and/or pride for you/your organization?

Our most important source of pride and inspiration is our staff, who swiftly adjusted to remote work, developed innovative ways of engaging their communities and went above and beyond to help our users develop the digital skills required to use our online tools, sometimes spending hours of their own time over the phone giving our users a detailed walkthrough of our platforms.

5Anything else you want to share?

Pro Mujer reiterates its gratitude to our strategic partners who have responded to this pandemic rapidly and effectively, allowing us to further and scale our impact.

1What was the most difficult decision you faced as an organization when you reached out to Open Road during COVID-19?

I honestly thought we might need to shut down. Very quickly, our expenses increased drastically while revenue dropped by 30-45% depending on the clinic. We had just expanded to 6 additional clinics at the start of 2020. We were faced with a larger network of clinics, rising costs, tanking revenue, all while running a business that absolutely needed to be there, and be open for the community. Deciding to stay open and do everything necessary to protect our frontline health workers was a difficult call knowing the consequences it would have on our sustainability, but it was also the only call we could have made at the time.

2How has COVID-19 impacted the way you run your organization today?

We are very focused on expanding our digital health services to patients. We had always offered telemedicine services to patients inside of clinics -- now (with support from Open Road), we are increasing digital touchpoints with our patients outside of their clinic visits. This is a strategic shift and is reflected throughout our team and goals for the past two years.

3Can you share more about what impact you have been able to keep on track since working with Open Road?

Open Road acted fast to support organizations such as Access Afya. This provided us direct support to implement our phone-based clinic service, mDaktari. It also sent a signal to other partners and potential funders that we had support and would weather this. I raised over $1 million in 2020 to keep Access Afya clinics open, keep frontline health workers safe, and keep digital and phone-based support services stable and staffed.

4A source of inspiration and/or pride for you/your organization?

I'm proud that our franchisees stuck with us, despite our first year being what I hope is the most challenging that we will face together. I am proud that we have maintained high patient recovery rates and high satisfaction rates despite the challenges faced by working-class Kenyans accessing and paying for healthcare these past two years.

1What was the most difficult decision you faced as an organization when you reached out to Open Road during COVID-19?

With school closures and distance learning, schools and teachers across the country were desperate to establish contact with students’ families - especially limited-English-speaking and those without access to technology. Our decision to reach out to Open Road to help was actually an easy one because we knew we had to respond quickly to meet the growing demand and get TalkingPoints’ multilingual communication and coaching platform into the hands of teachers and families needing it the most in order to maintain strong home-school connections and keep families informed and students on-track.

2How has COVID-19 impacted the way you run your organization today?

COVID-19 put a spotlight on the importance of strong family-school partnerships and the impact these connections can have on student success and well-being. During COVID-19, we scaled significantly as an organization to remove systemic barriers to family engagement. We tripled in size and have driven innovation to product development and research to deepen our impact.

3Can you share more about what impact you have been able to keep on track since working with Open Road?

TalkingPoints has continued to expand its reach as well as deepen its impact and engagement through the platform. We also experienced nearly 10X growth in reach in the past two years - to more than 4.5M teachers, families, and students today and we have facilitated more than 200 million meaningful home-school connections.

4A source of inspiration and/or pride for you/your organization?

Our teachers on the ground who are working tirelessly to support students and families and our families at home who are working hard to do the same for their children. Teachers called us a ‘lifesaver’ during COVID-19 and we were inspired by schools and families using TalkingPoints to coordinate meal deliveries, computer drop-offs, provide mental health support, and more during this ever-evolving time. [Translated from Spanish] TalkingPoints parent: “Thank you very much for this way of communicating with the teachers, it is a great help. Now I am more informed of what is going on with my son, his progress, his homework, and everything related to his class. This is an easy way and best of all in my language. My language was a disadvantage before, but now I have more communication. Thank you very much for making my life more beautiful.

5Anything else you want to share?

The past year and a half has transformed home-school connections, establishing a healthy foundation for schools and families to build on. It’s time to double down on family engagement. We are at a critical inflection point and have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fundamentally shift the role of families in children’s education and build a more equitable future for each and every student.