To our community, 

Next year will mark 10 years since Open Road Alliance made its first charitable grant. For a decade we have focused on supporting organizations facing “roadblocks” to impact and drawing attention to the reality that even the best-laid plans can get derailed. For the first eight years, our analysis showed that funders were historically the greatest cause of these roadblocks. In the present—for 18 months and counting—the main roadblock has been the continued fallout from COVID-19. But as the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s August 2021 report made undeniably clear, the greatest roadblock of our future is climate change.

In recognition of the dire threats posed by carbon emissions and climate change, effective January 1, 2022, Open Road will only provide charitable grants to nonprofit organizations addressing climate change through carbon reduction strategies.

As I wrote on Earth Day earlier this year, “every challenge facing humans, including hunger, conflict, housing, racial inequity, and poverty, is adversely affected by climate change.” These challenges will grow significantly greater if humanity fails to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and achieve net-zero global carbon emissions by 2050. Yet successfully reaching these goals is far from certain.

For this reason, we have decided to reserve our charitable dollars exclusively for organizations directly tackling climate change. Within this sector, we will continue to support nonprofits encountering unexpected roadblocks or obstacles on their path to impact. You can review our full grantmaking criteria on our website.

Our loan portfolio and the Open Road Impact Fund will remain open to all geographies and sectors.

This strategic shift is our way of taking a concrete step against climate change. Over the past 10 years, we have often referred to ourselves as the “emergency room” of impact. There is no greater emergency than the threat posed by climate change.

 

Sincerely,

Maya Winkelstein

CEO, Open Road Alliance