Increased attention to sustainable development goals
17 February 2020 at 4:54 pm
Philanthropic funding in support of the sustainable development goals has been shooting up every year since their adoption, and funders are increasingly collaborating to chart their investments and global progress towards the goals. Still, a projected $2.5 trillion funding gap persists – with no silver bullet in sight, write Jamie DeLeeuw and Teri Behrens.
In May 2018, Kanye West set off an unusual internet firestorm. Seemingly out of nowhere, West shared a tweet with his 28 million followers, “The United Nations introduced the Sustainable Development Goals and platform in 2015 to transform the world by 2030”. Across the Twitter-sphere many people, especially those in organisations doing the work to achieve these goals, debated the tweet’s value. Was West’s message a throw-away comment, or could his influence as a celebrity help bring attention to these global efforts?
In 2015, the United Nations (UN) members adopted the sustainable development goals (SDGs), also known as Global Goals. The SDGs are a set of 17 interconnected goals that ideally would lead to all people having a viable future and a significant quality of life by 2030. The goals, which focus on the eradication of extreme poverty and inequality, and climate improvement, comprise 169 targets and 232 indicators to measure impact. The SDGs are a more transformative and comprehensive successor to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals that originated in 2000.
Whether or not West’s tweet had a measurable impact on public interest or progress on these goals, it is clear that philanthropy is increasing its investment in these efforts and in the public’s awareness. Between 2010 and 2015, foundations worldwide spent an average of $34.3 billion annually on global initiatives that aligned with SDG goals. That number increased considerably following the adoption of the SDGs. Between 2016 and 2019, foundations spent an average of $39.8 billion annually ($159 billion total), with a few weeks remaining in 2019 at the time of this writing.
While this $5.5 billion annual funding increase can’t be directly attributed to the adoption of the SDGs, it does provide evidence that philanthropists have increased their investment in SDG-related initiatives. Since 2016, the top foundations dispersing funds worldwide include: the global development heavy hitter Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ($12.8 billion), Fidelity Charitable ($4.6 billion), and Gothic Corporation ($3.4 billion), formed to support the tax-exempt intentions of Duke University. Philanthropic dollars have most heavily supported the goals of Quality Education ($64.3 billion); Good Health and Well-Being ($50.7 billion); and Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions ($16 billion)*.
“The sustainable development goals are a set of 17 interconnected goals that ideally would lead to all people having a viable future and a significant quality of life by 2030.”
While private foundations doing international grantmaking have been among the biggest users of the SDG framework, the Council on Foundations’ report about the relevance of the SDGs for community foundations is helping draw attention to their value. For instance, we are starting to see some community foundations, such as the Southwest Florida Community Foundation, begin to use the SDGs in assessing their work.
Foundations are collaborating amongst themselves and other stakeholders to track philanthropic investments and SDG outcomes to accelerate impact. The SDG Philanthropy Platform is supported by the United Nations Development Programme and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, and provides reports and highlights on current initiatives and regions of focus.
SDG Funders grew out of the SDG Philanthropy Platform. Created by Candid (formerly Foundation Center and GuideStar), and funded by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the MasterCard Foundation, it provides tools and captures data primarily from US foundations, to support alignment and report on giving that advances SDG targets. The populations targeted by the grantmaking and region/country of funding source are also available on the site.
Philanthropy is also supporting efforts to keep the public informed about global progress toward these goals. The SDG Tracker is an open access data visualisation tool that allows the public to view SDG goal progress globally and by country. It is a collaboration between researchers at the University of Oxford and the Global Change Data Lab, which publishes Our World in Data. The data available on the tracker include UN statistics and information from other international organisations. Our World in Data has received grant support from the Gates Foundation, Susanne Klatten, and Nuffield Foundation, as well as contributions from sponsors.
Achieving the 17 SDGs by 2030 will require an additional estimated $2.5 trillion annually. With the increased attention to the goals and to collecting, analysing, and sharing data about progress, we may get close to accomplishing some of them.
*Note: Grants may be counted in the funding totals of multiple SDGs, rendering the calculation of percentage of overall funding by SDG, inaccurate.
This article was originally published as part of 11 Trends in Philanthropy for 2020, produced by the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy.
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