How Toniic members make an impact on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals
Read the report at https://toniic.com/resource-center/
Impact investing contributes to solving the world’s biggest problems, which are well-framed by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Toniic’s T100: Powered Ascent report, part of a longitudinal study of investment portfolios that are seeking deep positive net impact, provided the first look at how private impact portfolios are addressing the SDGs across asset classes. This briefing digs into the underlying data from 76 portfolios, totaling $2.8 billion in committed capital, to get a sense of where the most active impact investors see opportunities, the types of investments they’re making, and what they’re investing in.
T100 participants have embraced the SDGs for their potential to unite the public sector, companies, and investors around a shared language and common set of issues. To encourage that synergy, Toniic has collaborated with members and the impact industry to create the SDG Impact Theme Framework. Available to any impact investor, this evolving framework aligns common impact themes with the SDGs to clarify global investment opportunities.
Many of the investments in T100 portfolios are private and illiquid, with aspirations for tremendous impact that goes far beyond what is typically achievable with public market investments. These portfolios also go beyond the current media darlings, such as clean energy, to include themes such as affordable housing, green building, and smart cities. Understand these investors and you understand a vibrant and radical new form of capitalism.
All 17 SDGs are addressed in the aggregated T100 portfolios, but this briefing focuses on five SDGs that account for more than 60 percent of the invested capital in the study — SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy, SDG 3: Good Health, SDG 2: Zero Hunger, and SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production. Because systemic challenges require integrated solutions, impact investments often relate to more than one SDG; for this briefing we sorted investments by the SDG they primarily address.
While the data show investments across asset classes for these five SDGs as a group, it’s clear that each goal provides distinctive opportunities. Private equity is the most common investment in SDG 12 and SDG 7. Public equity is the top asset class in SDG 3, reflecting the scale of healthcare solutions, and real assets dominate in SDG 11 and SDG 2, where fundamental needs such as
land acquisition for sustainable agriculture require more patient capital. We have provided representative investments for each SDG, but there are many more in the Toniic Diirectory, a publicly accessible online catalog of over 1,600 impact investments searchable by SDG. We encourage you to explore it.
