IMPACT FUND
TABLE OF CONTENTS
OVERVIEW
Introduction ...............................
IMPACT
The World Since 2020 ....................
Impact Model ..............................
Impact Overview ...........................
Borrower Impact Survey ...................
PIPELINE & PORTFOLIO
Impact Deep Dive: Women & Girls .......
Pipeline & Sourcing ........................
Portfolio Trends .............................
WHAT’S NEXT
Portfolio Deep Dive: Climate ..............
Open Road Impact ........................ I II III IV
OVERVIEW INTRODUCTION
OUR STORY
Founded in 2012 with a goal to ‘unstick’ capital for impact organizations, Open Road’s journey from philanthropy to advocacy to lending reflects dedication to serving non-profits, social enterprises, and entrepreneurs their ever-changing needs. Guided by our north star of making capital kets work more effectively and efficiently, the tools that help us achieve vision represent our values of practicality and ambition. Open Road er shied away from iterating on previous work and evolving to better our stakeholders. In continuation of that spirit, this report aims to successes and lessons of our first external loan fund, the Open Road Fund, and introduce the next chapter in our journey.
The Open Road Impact Fund (ORIF) began in 2020 with a hypothesis bridge lending model could serve mission-driven organizations facing ing delays and provide financial and impact returns to our investors. the last five years, we learned that there is indeed a high demand capital and that through tailored underwriting and flexible structuring, successfully generate the financial, climate, and social outcomes tors seek. However, we also learned that a key theme in our work, world, is that the only certainty is uncertainty. From a worldwide to economic shifts across debt and equity markets to geopolitical entrepreneurs are constantly facing new threats to their success. As allocator committed to expanding entrepreneurs’ access to financing keeping committed funding on track, Open Road has responded these challenges by working hand in hand with our borrowers.
I II III IV organizations, reflects our entrepreneurs and capital marachieve this Road has nevbetter serve to mark the Road Impact hypothesis that a facing fundinvestors. Over demand for bridge structuring, we can our inveswork, and the pandemic geopolitical changes, As an asset financing and to each of 94
$18M LOANS CAPITAL $54M DISBURSED
OVERVIEW THE WORLD SINCE
COVID 19 PANDEMIC
• Husk is a solar minigrid company serving 400 rural communities, including 1.5 million residential customers and more than 30,000 small businesses, across India and Nigeria.
• They faced significant delays in closing $4.5M of long-term debt due to multiple COVID-19 surges in 2021 and 2022.
• Open Road’s $1M loan allowed Husk to reach in-country profitability more quickly and accelerate their clean energy expansion to other geographies.
“INVESTMENT
WINTER” IN AFRICA
• Jibu capitalizes, equips, and trains emerging market entrepreneurs to launch and grow clean drinking water franchises in Sub-Saharan Africa.
• They faced multiple delays due to slow-moving and hesitant investors nervous about the equity headwinds of 2022.
• Open Road’s $750K loan allowed the launch of new franchises as well as significant sales volume growth while Jibu worked to close the round.
Between 2020 and 2025, Open Road stepped in to support borrowers events. As one of our previous borrowers told us, “It’s not that we ner to turn to when our business is facing headwinds makes all capital for—to deploy our expertise in assessing both the true financial unfunded. Over the last five years, Open Road has recycled over 94 loans, keeping $549 million of committed funding on to accelerate the growth of our borrowers as well as the social and compounding effect, amplifying both financial and impact returns
• • •
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USAID FUNDING FREEZE WAR IN UKRAINE
• Hala Systems provides real-time alerts to residents of war zones, giving families crucial time to seek shelter before airstrikes devastate their communities.
• They were awarded a $4.3M grant from the EU that required a financial guarantee to unlock the funds.
• Open Road’s $1M loan allowed the company to unlock the full award and to make vital staff hires to quickly expand support in Ukraine, scaling up early-warning civilian intelligence within weeks of the invasion.
• The Trump administration’s funding freeze in early 2025 put the impact of hundreds of projects at risk.
• Open Road stepped in to provide 0% loans to USAID Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) grantees, ensuring critical operations continued without interruption.
• Funded by philanthropy outside of the Open Road Impact Fund, these 0% loans helped DIV grantees cover immediate funding gaps while awaiting the release of federal funds for work that had been completed prior to the termination of their contracts.
borrowers as they navigated through the world’s unexpected we don’t expect difficulties, but knowing we have a trusted partthe difference.” This is what we are proud to use our investors’ financial risk of a deal and the impact risk if an organization goes recycled our investors’ capital three times, disbursing $54 million on track. Through this strategic reinvestment, we have been able and environmental outcomes they generate. This has created a returns for our investors, borrowers, and ultimate end-beneficiaries.
IMPACT MODEL
DELAYS DON’T DISCRIMINATE IMPACT KEPT ON TRACK
Across all geographies, sectors, and business models, delays in funding threaten impact and financial success. Open Road’s value is stepping in during these moments of low liquidity to keep business operations on track, or even accelerated, while a borrower works toward the close of their larger incoming facility. In practical terms, this often looks like a 6–8 month bridge loan to cover monthly operating expenses to make strategic investments. Ultimately, the loan is then repaid by the larger financing facility, whether that be an equity round, long-term debt agreement, or grant, when it closes.
In addition to a borrower’s contribution to impact outcomes, whether that be for individuals, communities, or the planet, Open Road also seeks to understand our investor contribution, or “additionality,” to the ultimate end-beneficiary. Given our goal of unsticking capital, the metric used to best measure our effect on impact is the dollar amount each of our loans ‘unsticks’. We calculate this by dividing the repayment transaction we are bridging to (debt, equity, or grant proceeds) by the Open Road loan amount. This gives us a multiple, which is the impact return on our investment. For example, Open Road’s $1M loan to Mr. Green Africa bridged to a $14M Series B blended finance transaction, meaning the Open Road loan had kept 14X ‘impact on track’.
$14M Repayment Transaction
= 14X Impact On Track
DELAYED
$1M Open Road Bridge Loan AVERAGE
IMPACT OVERVIEW
Over the last five years, Open Road’s loan portfolio has roughly mirrored investment trends of the impact investing industry. For example, between when Sub-Saharan Africa saw a boom in renewable energy projects Road’s pipeline of applicants and subsequent portfolio of disbursements jump. As a result, both our business development and portfolio risk stantly evolving to stay up to date with the market and ready to respond delays derail impact outcomes.
SDGs
Affordable and Clean Energy: 31.0% No Poverty: 19.5%
Decent Work and Econonic Growth: 10.4%
Good Health and Well Being: 9.5%
Zero Hunger: 7.3%
Responsible Consumption and Production: 6.0% Quality Education: 5.2% Climate Action: 3.1%
Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure: 2.1%
Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions: 1.8%
Clean Water and Sanitation: 1.4%
Reduced Inequalities: 1.3%
Gender Equality: 0.8%
Sustainable Cities and Communiites: 0.6%
SECTORS
mirrored the broader between 2017 and 2022 projects and funding, Open disbursements also saw a risk strategy are conrespond when unavoidable
SECTORS
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BRIDGE
IMPACT BORROWER IMPACT SURVEY
Between 2022 and 2025, Open Road gathered feedback and insights repaid borrowers in an effort to further understand both the challenges impact-first companies from thriving and the tangible impact of our loans ers and end-beneficiaries. With over 40 responses since 2022, the data consistently highlights that legal hurdles are the most common barrier to disbursement Open Road’s key strengths lie in our ability to act quickly, offer flexibility, and competitive pricing.
8 Months
AVG. DELAY months to financing event
81%
BORROWERS
couldn’t cover OpEx without Open Road
2,966 30
TOTAL # EMPLOYEES kept in jobs
MEDIAN # EMPLOYEES kept in jobs
BORROWERS SAW of service the
In 2024, Open Road participated in BlueMark’s new assessment and benchmark ing tool, Fund Impact Diagnostic (Fund ID). As a leading provider of independent impact verification and intelligence across impact investing, the tool was to help investors analyze a fund’s strengths and areas of growth across Strategy, Impact Governance, Impact Management, and Impact Reporting. Road received a Gold Rating, the second highest designation and was recognized with high marks for our impact strategy. Feedback included improved ESG Risk management and mitigation, which Open Road has worked to integrate into our investment policies. Funds receiving a Gold rating implement most to all fundamental best practices across the four assessment pillars.
IMPACT DEEP DIVE WOMEN & GIRLS
WOMEN & GIRLS
According to the World Bank, there is growing evidence to show how removing locks economic productivity, reduces poverty, deepens social cohesion, prosperity for both current and future generations. Furthermore, these participation and leadership improves the management of natural resources, resilience, and makes economies more competitive. Open Road’s benefiting women and girls aims to catalyze these widespread benefits hoods globally. Since 2020, Open Road has invested $7.4M in companies on serving women and girls, keeping $56M of impact on track. As a made up 15% of the cumulative portfolio.
EARLY BIRD
Public education in South Africa begins at age six, meaning that any care or education prior to that is left entirely to the private market. This poses an issue for many families who cannot afford private educare and leaves both children and, disproportionately, their mothers at risk for lower education and income outcomes.
Earlybird seeks to fill this gap by building a network of high-quality Early Childhood Care and Education (‘educare’) centers across South Africa for children under age six. They use multiple delivery channels to serve children and families from across the socioeconomic spectrum, and are committed to improving the school-readiness outcomes of all South African children. While working ment to scale up costs associated al site in time for particular, the completion umentation took and risked Earlybird demic year. As such, the company from Open Road track for an early They were also add 6 new staff, Road’s loan. Earlybird 2024 and was shortly thereafter.
GIRLS I II III IV
removing gender barriers uncohesion, and enhances wellbeing and these studies prove that women’s resources, strengthens community investment into enterprises benefits and improve female livelicompanies intentionally focused proportion of all deals, this
towards a $1.2 million Series A investup their model, Earlybird began to incur associated with their goal of opening an additionfor the beginning of the school year. In completion of the transaction’s legal doctook much longer than initially anticipated, Earlybird missing the beginning of the acacompany sought a short-term bridge loan Road at the end of 2023 to keep them on early 2024 opening of a new educare center. also able to keep 78 people employed, staff, and serve 682 children during Open Earlybird closed their $1.2M round in April, able to fully repay Open Road’s loan thereafter.
Earlybird’s CEO, Meg Blair, reflected,
We had approached a number of South African bridging finance providers before being introduced to Open Road. The experience working with the Open Road team was nightand-day compared to our engagements with the local lenders. Their responsiveness, the clarity regarding the process and terms, and the efficiency with which it unfolded was eye-opening. Not only was Open Road faster, and able to provide better terms, the team also grasped the key risks and challenges in our model remarkably well”.
IMPACT DEEP DIVE WOMEN & GIRLS
KASHA was founded in 2016 in Rwanda. Kasha enables women of all socioeconomic levels in urban and rural areas of emerging markets to confidentially and discreetly order menstrual care products, medicine, and other health and personal care products using their basic mobile phones, with no internet access required. Seventy percent of Kasha’s customers are low-income women living at the base of the pyramid, though Kasha also serves middle-income women who are able to order through its e-commerce website.
Kasha’s purpose-driven business creates impact not only by enabling discrete access to quality health products, but also by providing access to accurate health information and supporting the employment of low-income women as “Kasha Agents” for last-mile delivery. To date, Kasha has served over 102,000 unique customers and sold over 97 million units of product.
In 2023, Kasha had $15M soft-circled for their Series B from both commercial investors and a number of DFIs. Unfortunately, the round was slow-moving due to administrative hurdles. With limited runway to keep serving their customers, Kasha approached Open Road for a $1M bridge loan. Open Road’s funding was ultimately able to keep Kasha’s team employed, their customers served, and the company on track for rapid growth when the Series B closed five months later.
GIRLS I II III IV
BE GIRL A women-led business founded in 2014, Be Girl, Inc. provides access to high-quality menstrual products in underserved markets worldwide. Be Girl also conducts age-appropriate menstrual education, and designs “period-positive” communications campaigns to dismantle stigma while also generating product demand.
In January 2023, Be Girl was presented with a significant opportunity for scale when UNFPA-Angola offered them a $2.3M contract for a project targeting 200,000 girls. This was the largest contract Be Girl had received by over 3X. Their collaborative efforts with UNFPA-Angola over the years have demonstrated that access to Be Girl’s PeriodPanties significantly reduced barriers to education and gender inequality. Unfortunately, UNFPA’s payment terms would require Be Girl to pay the total cost of producing and delivering 400,000 PeriodPanties and 200,000 SmartCycles before receiving any payment for the order.
Through Open Road’s $422k loan, in addition to other cofinancing, Be Girl was able to finance the necessary inventory for their substantial sale to UNFPA-Angola. Beyond facilitating the business transaction, the loan improves the lives of 200,000 girls in Angola and enabled Be Girl to realize its growth potential, putting them on track to break even in 2024.
PIPELINE & PORTFOLIO
PIPELINE & SOURCING
With the value of Open Road’s services grounded in the timing of our loan, it is vital that our brand and offering are wellknown in the industry. Open Road’s pipeline of applicants relies on a strong network of referral partners that we have built over the last 13 years - more than 50% of our loans in the Open Road Impact Fund came from peer impact investors and advisors familiar with Open Road and able to connect us to enterprises in need of a bridge loan.
Furthermore, curating strong relationships with other funders is also a crucial aspect of derisking our lending. By forming partnerships with our borrowers’ incoming investors, we are able to more effectively underwrite the transaction risk of each loan. This leads to higher quality loans and repayment rates, allowing Open Road’s capital to be recycled to additional borrowers.
PIPELINE & PORTFOLIO
PORTFOLIO TRENDS
Given that the Open Road Impact Fund had a five-year fund life, there ural ramp-up and ramp-down at either end of the investment period. ning of the fund’s tenor, we focused on building a pipeline and internal to manage a portfolio of 15-20 loans at a time. This strategic groundwork throughout 2022 and 2023 when our lending activity reached its peak. our attention turned to repayments and recovery, aiming to return funds tors by April 2025.
While this structure was appropriate given that it was our first fund side investors, having the facility be closed-ended took our lending of the market for a period of time during the wind-down leading up to As such, rather than navigate the dynamic of a fund lifecycle, Open iteration will use an evergreen structure, allowing us to maintain our in the market and continuously work to solve liquidity gaps for mission-driven organizations, globally.
PIPELINE & PORTFOLIO PORTFOLIO
CLIMATE
As the Open Road Impact Fund portfolio grew between 2020 and 2025, it became more and more apparent that there was a particular use-case for our loans in helping advance climate change mitigation and adaptation. Initially, we disbursed a number of loans to energy companies providing solar home systems and accessories. As the work continued and the sector evolved, however, we saw that a much broader range of climate projects and companies could benefit from bridge lending.
From minigrids to nature-based solutions to advanced technology development, Open Road was proud to help accelerate the mitigation of detrimental environmental impacts and the adaptation of affected communities worldwide. Over the last five years, Open Road disbursed $25.4M toward climate-related projects and enterprises across 43 loans. These loans had an average 14X impact return, totalling $365.6M Impact Kept on Track.
In the last 30 lost between mangrove forests and excess harvesting for fuel. Not ing to the local the communities groves for their are already among and most climate-vulnerable.
West Africa Blue’s in the Sherbro Sierra Leone. Blue has worked munities towards protecting approximately ares of mangroves restoration, improved alternative livelihood
In 2023, Blue $6 million in new ra Leone project
WEST AFRICA
30 years, West Africa has between 25% and 50% of its forests due to overfishing harvesting of wood to use only is this loss damaglocal ecosystem, but also to communities that rely on the mantheir livelihoods, and who among the world’s poorest climate-vulnerable.
Blue’s first project is located Sherbro River Estuary (SRE) of Over the last three years, worked with the local comtowards the shared goal of approximately 92,000 hectmangroves through education, improved cookstoves, and livelihood activities.
Blue was on track to close new funding for the Sierproject until multiple hurdles
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slowed the timeline to close. As blue carbon is nascent, several processes required far more time than anticipated to ensure funders understood the market and business model. As a result, Blue turned to Open Road for a $900,000 loan to help keep community and project initiatives on track as well as continue the process towards carbon certification.
During Open Road’s loan, Blue was able to expand their team from less than 90 to approximately 475 people, of which around 35% are women. The majority of the team, about 90%, live and work in the communities of Sierra Leone, leading on mangrove restoration and livelihood and education initiatives. In August 2023, the project was successfully registered with Verra with the highest level of Community, Climate and Biodiversity certification.
AFRICA BLUE
PIPELINE & PORTFOLIO
MR. GREEN AFRICA
PORTFOLIO
Over 62 million tons of urban waste is generated each year in Sub-Saharan Africa. By 2025, this is projected to have increased to 161 million tons per annum and at the moment, less than 5% of urban waste is recycled.
Founded in 2015, Mr. Green Africa (MGA) sought to address this issue while also giving a dignified income to informal waste pickers in Kenya. To date, the company has paid over $3 million to waste pickers while removing and recycling over 20,000 tonnes of plastic waste from various landfills across Kenya. This is the equivalent of 1 billion plastic bottles recycled and a reduction of one ton of carbon emissions.
In 2021, MGA received their third Open Road loan to bridge to their Series B funding, which resulted in an expanded capacity to collect and process additional waste. Their topline revenue grew significantly, and only 11 months later, MGA was facing the need to expand their factory again to keep up with demand.
Commitments for a bridge round surpassed the target quickly with $9 million in convertible debt secured as well as a longterm debt facility for $5 million from the DFC. A condition to the funding, however, was the change of domicile registration to the Netherlands. With over 15 investors and a complex balance sheet, this delay meant that MGA was going to have to pause construction due to working capital constraints.
In early October 2023, Open Road stepped in with a $1 million bridge loan to help MGA keep their factory progress on track. The new hub will allow output to grow from 4k tons to 20k tons of processing capacity annually. It also employs 160 Kenyans full-time, with the ability to ramp up to an additional 300 day laborers depending on demand. Mr. Green Africa repaid Open Road in December 2023 as a result of the successful close of $9 million of convertible debt.
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In 2023 commercial and personal transportation contributed to 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions as a result of internal combustion engines that emit greenhouse gasses. This is the second highest source of emissions worldwide and a major driver of climate change. And while Electric Vehicles (EVs) are important in mitigating these emissions, they do not currently serve the needs of commercial vehicles that require extended use, long range, or heavy payloads.
In order to address this challenge, EH Group developed a hydrogen fuel cell system that offers up to 300kW of energy storage and supply on a single stack. The technology is aimed at serving the needs of heavy-duty trucks, mining, maritime vessels, material handling, and aviation where weight and volume are key criteria. In simple terms, each kilowatt of green hydrogen operation saves 1kg of CO2 from emitting into the atmosphere. This equates to over 8,000 tons of CO2 saved annually as compared to a diesel engine.
In early 2023, EH Group was raising their Series A and had multiple offers from a number of major strategic investors. They approached Open Road for a $750,000 bridge loan in order to give them the time and space to choose the right shareholders and close the funding round. In December, 2023 EH Group had a first close of $5 million as part of their Series A and was able to fully repay Open Road’s loan.
EH GROUP
PIPELINE & PORTFOLIO IMPACT
NURU
With a population comprising over half of Central Africa’s total, the Democratic Republic of Congo has one of the lowest electrification rates in the region, with less than 19% of households having access. Despite the growing significance of minigrids as a cost-effective solution for future electricity needs,they have remained significantly underfunded in the energy access markets.
Nuru finances, deploys and operates utility-scale, off-grid, solar-hybrid minigrids in the DRC, which can be rapidly installed to provide reliable, affordable, and scalable electricity to address unmet and under-served demand. Nuru aims to directly serve commercial and industrial off-takers as well as to sell power to households, SMEs, and institutions. In 2022 Nuru required a $1M bridge loan to further establish a firm foundation in the DRC. They needed to be able to support on-site development costs to make sure their projects could close on an upcoming Series B and be
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shovel ready for investment by the end of the year. At the time, they were also processing a close of up to $44M in debt and equity financing from a consortium of funders.
Open Road’s $1M bridge loan enabled Nuru to maintain continuity of service, providing electricity to hundreds of thousands of underserved households, businesses, and social institutions. The loan also served as a catalyst for expanding the company’s impact in the region. Despite enduring various macroeconomic challenges during the loan period, including a nearby volcanic eruption, setbacks caused by COVID-19, and ongoing delays in funding from grant providers, Nuru’s operations continued to thrive and progress as planned. Through Open Road’s loan Nuru was able to allocate funds towards site development costs, expedite key projects, and secure additional bridge financing while simultaneously closing their Series B funding round.
WHAT’S NEXT?
VALUES
Open Road’s intentionality shows up in our team values. Teamwork and kindness are the foundation of our day-today and define how we work with and support each other. We are grateful for the work we get to do.
Openness: We continuously learn, evolve, improve, and innovate on what and how we work.
Equity: We believe we have a responsibility to improve our actions and behaviors to build a more equitable world.
Practicality: We ask ourselves if we are being efficient, flexible, fair, and focused on creating action in a timely manner.
Ambitious: We strive to be courageous in doing hard things. We seek to persevere and be resilient in our mission to match the tenacity of those we serve.
Accountable: We aim to be accountable to our impact investments, entrepreneurs, investors, and the planet.
The stories and to serving impactful ing environments to the needs of moments but ahead, we are capital in the social
Over the past within our model. the sector, we broad range of and boldly adopting forefront of our
As a non-profit, risks when impact ucts to best serve purposely embracing reprioritize the impact-first strategies
Open Road is Road Impact Fund Dr. Laurie Michaels, vision. As we tal, and we look create lasting
