Fundraising strategies and tactics for activists, nonprofits and community benefit organizations.

Fundraising for social justice and transformative progress is hard work. We’re here to make it a little easier. At Open Rivers you’ll find actionable resources, insightful guidance and a heart-centered community.

All with one aim: To catalyze your fundraising capacity.

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At Open Rivers, members of our community hail from more than 25 countries worldwide where they tackle some of the most pressing issues of our time. They’re in the streets and saving lives with humanitarian care and a healthy dose of compassion. They’re launching creative activations and taking direct action with their bodies on the line. They’re seekers and storytellers from all walks of life. Day in and day out, they’re doing the work that makes a just and thriving world possible.

How we serve you . . .

Complimentary access to articles, resources and free trainings designed to keep it simple, take action and get funding in the door.

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Personalized expertise, coaching and immersive collaboration tailored to meet your unique fundraising challenges.

Let's Work Together

Gatherings online and IRL that bring our community together to learn, discover common ground and empower one another.

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A message from Kristin Oliver, founder of Open Rivers . . .

The idea of Open Rivers first seeded in the wake of the 2008 bank bailout. A few years later, that idea got its sea legs in New York City as I grappled with how to move the money to the front lines of activism (and there was evidently plenty of cash flow out there to move if the roll call on the bank bailout was any indication).

I dove head first into development and fundraising for nonprofits that had incredible missions but were operating on unsustainable, shoestring budgets. While corporations were negotiating multi-billion dollar funding rounds and aiming for trillion dollar market caps, phenomenal people were doing work that would save the world. Yet they were ridiculously underfunded.

So I set my sights on diverting all that cash flow to them. It’s definitely a work-in-progress.

Touchstones

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E Q U I T Y: Fight tirelessly for an honest, equitable distribution of wealth worldwide.

E Q U A L I T Y: Approach relationships as partnerships, never as power dynamics.

C O L L A B O R A T I O N: Fundraising should not be a competitive sport, my friends. We’re all in this together.

G E N E R O S I T Y: Because where on earth would we be without it?

Causes that we adore and actively support:

Yes, climate change is real, it’s happening now and it is potentially catastrophic to all life on this planet, humanity included.

Organizations and activists taking on the global climate crisis have a special place in our hearts.

Activists who are, literally, saving the world.

🌍 🌎 🌏

From change-makers who are uprising against systemic injustice and inequality to those who are spearheading a free, just and thriving society for all, we embrace and appreciate you.

“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” -Audre Lorde

Across all issues, we believe in building bridges, not walls.

Art

Activism

An infusion of transcendence?

✨Yes, please. ✨

“The role of the artist is to transcend conventional wisdom, to transcend the word of the establishment, to transcend the orthodoxy, to go beyond and escape what is handed down by the government or what is said in the media.” – Howard Zinn, Artists in Times of War: