Toniic, an impact-investment non-profit based in San Francisco, announced its SDG Impact Theme Framework at the Confluence Philanthropy 7th Annual Practitioners Gathering in New Orleans, Louisiana on Wednesday.
What It Is
The new Framework proposes linkages to 11 macro impact investing themes, and 55 sub-themes, to the United Nations’ own Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is designed to improve how impact might be better measured.
Toniic’s announcement is timely, given heated interest in the impact measurement space, evidenced by a well-attended ESG Forum impact measurement event last week, also in San Francisco, and by United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed first address in her new role, in New York at the opening of the 2017 UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) segment on Operational Activities for Development.
Toniic’s Global Reach
Toniic’s 160-member community represent more than 360 impact investors from 22 countries – it has global reach.
About 80 members in its community have also committed to move entire portfolios, ranging in size from about $2 million to more than $300 million into 100% impact investments. The total commitment represents close to $4 billion.
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“The SDGs are a set of seventeen inter-related aspirational goals for the planet approved by the United Nations in 2015 that bring together developing and developed world and public and private sector opportunities. They contain 169 targets for sustainable development of the planet to be achieved by 2030. These include ending poverty and hunger, improving health and education, making cities more sustainable, combating climate change, and protecting oceans and forests.
“The SDGs are proving to be a potent rallying point for the entire sustainability ecosystem,” said Jed Emerson, Senior Fellow of 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.”
“Toniic members are increasingly targeted in their impact investing,” said Adam Bendell, CEO of Toniic Institute. “We created the Toniic SDG Impact Theme Framework to better link Toniic members to relevant investment opportunities, and with other members working for the same goals. We found broad interest in the community to use the framework, so we made it open source in hopes of accelerating impact opportunities more broadly, and more quickly.”
“We see great interest among Confluence Philanthropy members in the SDGs as a unifying framework,” said Dana Lanza, CEO of Confluence Philanthropy. “We are delighted that Toniic chose our signature annual gathering to release this simple but important contribution to the field.”
An overview of the Toniic SDG Impact Theme Framework is available on the Toniic website at toniic.com/sdg-framework. Also available are the full framework, including Theories of Change for each sub-theme.”
Source: Toniic
