About Open Future Coalition
We are designers, developers, social systems architects, economists, storytellers, and movement builders innovating social, technological, and financial tools that support our ability to collectively innovate on, resource, and apply solutions to the world’s most pressing issues.
Although Open Future Coalition is the culmination of our team and partners’ life’s work, we came together officially in January of 2021 to help the global impact ecosystem strengthen its collaborative capacity by empowering the transparent exchange of capital, skills, and knowledge in service of measurable impact. Our first endeavor has been the launch of Open Impact, a network where impact organizations, donors, & community members can come together to match the right organizations with the right resources to maximize impact. In November of 2021, we onboarded 30 impact organizations in 13 countries to our private alpha. Today, we’re moving into our beta launch with 170 organizations in 16 countries, who are learning and testing with us as we incorporate feedback and expand our vision together.
We are honored to be growing alongside a rich impact ecosystem who are stewarding innovative and essential projects in areas like Regenerative Agriculture, Food Systems, Water, Community Wellness, Community Resilience, Climate Action, and Economic Equity. From community-led watershed remediation in Rajasthan to food systems collaboration and education in Hawai’i, healthy childcare in Chicago to food forests in Zimbabwe, we truly believe that this rich soil of collective learning will allow a vibrant and complex understory to take root. We recently harvested some of these learnings with the inaugural Open Future Forum, where 300 of our partners and allies in 36 countries participated in 34 hours of programming.
In our current phase, we’re partnering on core demonstration projects that help us refine how we design, measure, document, templatize, amplify, and resource networks of on-the-ground solutions. How do we effectively scale a project from one, to three, to three hundred, without losing contextual and bioregional relevance? How do we connect smallholder farmers with one another and with buyers of commodities to shift market dynamics to favor more regenerative practices? Can agencies more effectively coordinate, communicate, and apply resources in times of displacement?
By continuing to gather, apply, and advance collective community intelligence through distributed technology, capital innovation, social architecture, educational and community programming, and participatory design, we believe that together, we can write a new story for humanity that values our community and planetary thriving above speculation and extraction.
Our Pattern & Principles
We believe that true resilience scales many-to-many, and that we each have a unique part to play in this movement-of-movements. We see everything we do as an example and an opportunity for learning, and strive to hold contexts for radical humility: giving us the freedom to design not for the answers we think we know, but for the processes of evolving together when we try, fail, and learn the first, second, and hundredth time. We also believe deeply in collective and long-term stewardship, and strive to align our systems of decisionmaking and reciprocity with a thriving world for future generations.
We strive to support the local exchange of resources, and the global exchange of knowledge, and we thank you for being a part of that exchange with us. You can learn more about our ethics and organizing principles below.
Our Founders
Kaitlin Archambault
Founder & CEO
Kaitlin Archambault is a systems architect, designer, creative director, & communications strategist with over a decade of experience growing and leading creative and product teams. She started her career in public media, branding and growing the reach and funding of NPR and PBS programs as a part of The Futuro Media Group. In 2013, she went on to found Brooklyn-based creative studio Incendiary Designs, which has built and grown nonprofit and social good brands on 5 continents. Kaitlin has worked to advance education policy and grown thought leadership programs for placement in outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Hill.
With experiences that range from designing institutional-grade financial services platforms to leading global organizations through complex rebrands, Kaitlin recognizes that a truly design-driven approach takes into account issues of governance, compliance, and ethics. These days, she spends much of her time at the intersection between user experience and behavioral economics to ensure that emerging technologies—like blockchain and artificial intelligence—are thoughtfully constructed for the greater good.
In 2021, she founded Open Future Coalition, a social enterprise committed to helping the global impact ecosystem strengthen its collaborative capacity by empowering the transparent exchange of capital, skills, and knowledge. They recently launched Open Impact, a network where impact organizations, donors, & community members can come together to match the right organizations with the right resources to maximize impact.
Kaitlin’s background is in public art and grassroots movement building: she was part of the initial press push and benefit campaign around the imprisonment of Russian punk band Pussy Riot, and has taught art therapy at the women’s jail on Riker’s Island.
Jamaica Stevens
Co-Founder & Chief Culture Officer
Jamaica has spent her career enabling the integration of regenerative principles to amplify social and ecological impact and guide systemic change. As a facilitator and social systems architect, she has leveraged cooperative frameworks, whole systems design processes, living systems principles, and multi-stakeholder engagement to empower communities to thrive as social ecosystems.
She has 10 years of experience as an organizational and cultural design consultant, working with networks, non-profits, community based projects, and companies to cultivate collaborative capacity and implement social governance and circular based leadership practices. Jamaica serves on the Board of WaterNow, a nonprofit bringing water and sanitation engineering solutions to indigenous and village communities in the global south and has played an active role in coordinating efforts between water advocates to support the emergence of global water solutions.
As the Author of Reinhabiting the Village:CoCreating our Future, North America Representative of the Global EcoVillage Network, and co-founder of the Convergence Network, she has gained a deep understanding of supporting holistic social systems for human and planetary thriving. Through her experience as a cultural framework designer and consultant with VillageLab she has enabled coordinative and decision-making functions for over 40 communities of purpose, practice, and place.
She brings her background as an international event producer focused in logistics management and educational programming together with her experience in community building to support the strategic development of the Open Future Coalition ecosystem and grow the Open Impact community.