The Open Road Fund is a community fund giving $50,000 wealth-building gifts to Black folks in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota in order to create tangible pathways to liberation, prosperity, and healing on our own terms. Learn more about the fund here.
The Open Road Fund aims to redistribute resources to present-day descendants of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in an effort to catalyze intergenerational Black wealth building. Despite numerous obstacles to economic justice, we believe that abundance and success is a birthright. When faced with barriers, we can call upon our ancestors and one another to open the road to liberation. Our fund aims to strengthen the spirit of resilience and collective power in our communities.
The Open Road Fund opens annually on Juneteenth (June 19) and closes in late July. We will make gifts from the fund each year until they are fully distributed throughout the region.
2025 applications are now open! Apply by July 21, 11:59 pm CT.
Questions? Email ORFSupport@nexuscp.org or call Open Road Fund at 612-886-3449.
The Open Road Fund is a unique funding program designed for Individuals. Nonprofit organizations may not apply. Individuals may invest their grant award funds into a business. Individuals may also form groups of up to 5 members to work on a shared wealth building project: if selected, all members of the gift receive an award that they pool together to resource their project. Gifts from the Open Road Fund may not be used to start nonprofit organizations or engage in primarily charitable activities such as giving away all or most of the funds to friends, family, a faith institution, or political campaign. Funds also may not be used on wealth-building projects that could cause or support harm in communities. Applications featuring these kinds of projects will not be accepted.
Our Black Wealth definition allows for our community to use the gift in a lot of different ways. Some of the projects we have supported are:
- Opening a bookstore
- Taking a legacy trip to Africa
- Starting a trucking business
- Learning about and beginning an investment portfolio
- Paying down debt and buying a car
- Buying a farm and offering outdoor training to Black youth
- Owning a home
- Paying for college tuition
Eligibility for the Fund is restricted based on ancestry, geography, age, and alignment with the values of our program.
An eligible applicant must be: 1) a Black person who is a descendant of African people who were kidnapped and subjected to chattel enslavement in the Americas; 2) age 14 or older; 3) A resident of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, or any of the 23 Native nations whose territories are occupied by those states. Eligible uses of the Open Road Fund gift are also considered.
To register for the Open Road Fund, applicants must submit Identifying Documents to verify their identity. Access the list of accepted documents here. The list of documents is also in the registration application. Previous Open Road Fund Awardees will not be eligible for the Open Road Fund and may not apply again.
Want to prepare for the Open Road Fund in advance? Click here to access the application questions. You will still need to submit the application electronically, using our application form.
Our application is divided into two parts. Part one of the application is how you register for the Open Road Fund. It is short, simple, and easy to fill out, but some of the questions require thoughtful answers. In total there are 3-5 long-answer questions on the application. Most of the questions are multiple choice questions and to check your eligibility for the program and to collect community level data about the financial situations faced by our community.
If you are selected as a finalist for the Open Road Fund, you will be invited to fill out part 2 of the application. You will then have a month to create a detailed wealth-building project plan. The questions in that application are designed to guide you through the planning process.
Please take note of the following before you apply:
In our applications we will ask you questions about your ancestry, your life experiences, and your finances. We know that for some people, these are not easy questions to answer. The questions may stir up uncomfortable emotions or memories for you. Only share with us what you think is relevant for us to know. If you are selected as a finalist, real people will review your application, and many of us will share some of your life experiences. We will not judge you or shame you based on what you share. To help process these feelings, we hold ORF Community Care Calls, where Black mental health professionals talk about these questions and our shared experiences. When a new care call session is available, you can register for it through our website.
We are asking applicants to share if they have had specific life experiences, such as housing instability, experiences of incarceration, and more. The life experience categories we chose were created by community, our advisory committee, and the Open Road Fund team.
There are no trick questions on the Open Road Fund. We’re not trying to trip anyone up or make you second guess yourself. Just answer the questions in the application honestly and in a concise way.
We don’t care about punctuation and spelling issues—what’s important to us is that we learn about you, how you participate in Black communities in our region, and what you would do with a gift from the Fund.
We use random selection to choose finalists for a gift, but you should still reply to the questions thoughtfully. Completeness and thoughtfulness of responses is a criteria we look for in applications. If your response doesn’t help us understand how you qualify for the Open Road Fund, we may disqualify your application.
The Open Road Fund has a three-step selection process to choose awardees. Each year thousands of people apply for the fund from Black communities in our region.
Step 1, Applicant Confirmation: First our team reviews all applications to confirm eligibility, completion, and that they meet our qualification criteria. Applications that meet all our criteria are advanced to the next step of the process. Our qualifications for the fund are simple:
- You are eligible for the fund based on your age, heritage, and ancestry
- You have a thoughtful idea about how you will use a gift from the Fund to build wealth for yourself, family, or community
- You can speak to the ways you are connected to Black communities in Minnesota, North Dakota, and/or South Dakota
- Your wealth-building project is ethical and aligned with the values of the Open Road Fund
- If you are applying as a group, all of your members are working on a single project together that focuses on building a business, cooperative, investing, or real estate acquisition.
Step 2, Random Selection: Because we receive a high volume of applications and in the interest of fairness, we use a computer program to randomly select qualified applicants for an award from our fund. Our selection process is observed by Open Road Fund Advisory Council Members and Nexus Black staff members. After applicants are selected, we review their full application in-depth a second time to confirm eligibility, completeness, and alignment with our fund. If we learn upon review that someone doesn’t meet our criteria, we re-draw more qualifying applicants using the random-selection process.
We chose this process for a few reasons. The main reason is that grantmaking and grant writing is not a fair playing field. People who have more education, connections, and funding win grants most often. As a result, many people with brilliant ideas get left behind.
Our grant program focuses on addressing historic and ongoing economic violence, inequality, and injustices against Black people. We felt it was more fair to randomly select from an eligible pool of applicants, as we believe that all Black folks in this region are deserving of the opportunity to build wealth.
We know that this random-selection process is imperfect; for now, this is our best solution for distributing awards in an unfair situation. We chose to use the random-selection process at the encouragement of our advisors and Black community members in the ORF region. Our research and their support gave us the confidence to use this process. In our experience over the last two years, this process seems to be fairer and more beneficial to our people.
Step 3, Confirmation of Finalists: After randomly selecting 100 awardees, we give all the candidates 10 calendar days to confirm their participation in the program. During this time we email and call by phone to confirm finalists’ place in the program. If we do not hear from someone within that timeframe, we disqualify them and extend the gift to another qualifying applicant.
To ensure that we can reach you if you are selected, please make sure you enter the correct email address, phone number, and submit clear identifying documents on your application!
By submitting an application for the Open Road Fund, you agree to let us store your application responses for up to 10 years. We do so for a few reasons:
- In case we are audited
- So that we can contact you about future grant opportunities
- So that we can retrieve your application
- We also will share your application responses with our partner Research In Action, a Black woman-led research company. They are helping us to learn more about the impacts of the Open Road Fund on our community over the next eight years.
Identifying documents shared with us are deleted immediately after they are no longer needed.
All application data is stored on a server in a secure data center. Our server provider is committed to supporting Nexus’ control over the data from all of our programs. They have a commitment to not disclose data from their servers to government agencies unless compelled and will challenge unlawful requests. If and when that changes, we will change our data storage and application practices to better protect the privacy of applicants and our community.
Our Open Road Fund Story
Learn our story of making the Open Road Fund a reality. Hear from two recipients of the Open Road Fund.
What is Black Wealth?
Black wealth is—but is not limited to—healing from over five centuries of labor and livelihood stolen from us on this stolen land. Black wealth is owning what we produce. Black wealth is building and inventing for our families and community. Black wealth is a creative and sovereign practice of restoration that reaffirms the excellence that has always been in us.
Top Questions About the ORF
The Open Road Fund will accept applications starting at 9 AM CDT on June 19, 2025. The application will close at 11:59 PM CDT on July 21, 2025. Sign up for our e-newsletter to receive updates, or follow along on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn.
Yes, you can reuse your answers to any of our questions from previous years, but you will need to create a new application each year. We require applicants to do this in case their contact information, life situation, or wealth-building interests change. At times we update our application, and will alert the community through our website about these changes.
If you would like a copy of your previous Open Road Fund applications, you can request that by contacting us at ORFsupport@nexuscp.org. Please put the name, email, and phone number you used on your registration application so that we can search for it more easily. During the open period of the application, please expect delays in our response times.
No, Nexus Community Partners will not publicly name all awardees. Finalists may choose to share their status as a finalist if they wish. After the grant process is completed, awardees can opt in to allow Nexus to share their names. Out of a duty to care for and to protect the privacy of all grantees, especially those under 18, we are not requiring that their names be made public.
What we will share each year is a report on applicant and awardee demographics and lessons learned from them. If and when Open Road Fund awardees decide that they do want to share their stories, we will publish articles and videos about them through our website and social media channels.
