Beats | March 16, 2017

Toniic’s tool helps investors map impact themes to Sustainable Development Goals

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ImpactAlpha

Are you investing in basic goods and services, smallholder farmer finance, inclusive fintech or affordable housing? Then you’re working toward Sustainable Development Goal No. 1:  End global poverty.

That’s according to a new project from Toniic Institute, the research arm of the global impact investor network, which has matched common impact investment themes with the United Nations’ global goals for 2030.

Screenshot of Toniic’s SDG framework

The framework, released yesterday at Confluence Philanthropy’s annual meeting in New Orleans, La., maps 11 impact investing themes and 55 subthemes to the 17 global goals for shared prosperity and individual well-being adopted by world leaders in 2015.

“The SDGs are proving to be a potent rallying point for the entire sustainability ecosystem,” said Jed Emerson, a well-known impact investing strategist and senior fellow at the Toniic Institute. “From inception, the SDGs were conceived as requiring public/private cooperation. Aligning the private capital of impact investment with government action will greatly accelerate achievement of the goals.”

The global goals – ending extreme poverty, ending hunger, achieving universal education and gender parity, climate action and more – are uniting Dutch pension funds, Silicon Valley venture capitalists, startup accelerators in emerging markets and multi-national corporations (see, “Sustainable Development Goals take hold as a universal impact investment framework“).

Toniic, whose 160 member network represents 360 investors in 22 countries, has found broad interest for the Toniic SDG Impact Theme Framework, which is available to the public here.

CEO Adam Bendell said Toniic created the framework to link Toniic members to investment opportunities, and with other members working for the same goals.

Dana Lanza, who leads Confluence Philanthropy, said she sees great interest “in the SDGs as a unifying framework.”

The two-page document stops short of identifying specific investment opportunities. A similar project led by financial institutions in the Netherlands, for example, maps the 17 goals to retail investment products across asset classes.

Photo credit: Himesh Behera