Impact on the Menu: How Investing in Nutrition Can Help Achieve the SDGs

Nutrition underpins economic growth, health, and educational attainment, making it one of the most important barriers to achieving many SDGs, and one of the development sectors with the highest social return on investment. Yet it has not attracted the attention of the impact investing community. This panel will explore why investing in nutrition has lagged behind other impact themes, highlight the experience of early-movers in the space, and share practical tools for nutrition-curious investors. Wellspring Development will share its Nutrition-lens investing framework which was co-developed with USAID under the Feed the Future programme. The framework provides investors with a technical tool for identifying and screening nutrition investments–lowering the barriers to entry into this sector. GAIN will share its experience with the Nutritious Foods Financing Facility (N3F), the first-ever nutrition impact investing fund, as well as its evidence-based advocacy work to support the development of nutrition as an investment theme (i.e. exploring the intersection between child lens and nutrition investing, gender and nutrition). 60 Decibels will highlight how it has tailored its approach to end-stakeholder impact measurement for nutritious food companies, and how this impact data from lower-income consumers can be used to attract further capital flows toward nutrition.