New philanthropic collective, Stronger Foundations for Nutrition, announces over $1 billion from members and partners in nutrition for growth year of action.
Today, bold new commitments to fight malnutrition from a diverse and growing community of funders were announced alongside the formation of a new catalytic entity called Stronger Foundations for Nutrition. These funding commitments and the coalition driving them were announced at an official Nutrition for Growth side event, Financing the Nutrition Agenda: New Commitments, New Partnerships. The coalition, first formed on the margins of the 2017 Global Nutrition Summit and now in rapid scale up mode, brings together diverse philanthropic and corporate donors, working across health and food systems on four continents, to make catalytic new investments to improve nutrition outcomes around the world.
“Beyond the dollars themselves, the diversity of this community shows there is real innovation happening in how funds are raised and disbursed, and that it is time to start dreaming bigger to truly end malnutrition.”
Matt Freeman, Executive Director of Stronger Foundations for Nutrition
Malnutrition is the number one killer of children globally and 40 percent of the world cannot afford adequate diets, yet malnutrition is largely considered an afterthought in global health and development — receiving less than 1% of official development assistance. Stronger Foundations for Nutrition aims to elevate malnutrition as one of the world’s greatest and most critical challenges.
With founding membership from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, Tata Trusts, Rockefeller Foundation, Dangote Foundation, Eleanor Crook Foundation, King Philanthropies, Family-Larsson Rosenquist Foundation, Chaudhary Foundation, Kirk Humanitarian, and Rotary International, Stronger Foundations for Nutrition works across health, food and social protection systems in pursuit of all nutrition outcomes and more virtuous and sustainable food systems.
Commitments made at the event included:
King Philanthropies, a new foundation based in Silicon Valley, announced that they will invest $100 million to improve nutrition and food security. “King Philanthropies is increasingly focused at the intersection of extreme poverty and climate change; consequently, fighting malnutrition is a priority,” said Kim Starkey, CEO of King Philanthropies. “Those in extreme poverty will be disproportionately affected by climate change, which is already threatening food security and worsening malnutrition.”
The Rockefeller Foundation announced that they will support the creation of new, more robust metrics for tracking diet quality which can help align stakeholders around a common vision of success. Additionally, soon to be announced investments aimed at leveraging the power of institutional food procurement systems will shift the consumption of 20 million people globally toward more sustainably produced, healthy diets.
Givewell, an organization channeling large scale private giving to highly impactful and cost-effective global health and development programs, has committed to disburse $28 million to community-based management of acute malnutrition, and seeks future opportunities to scale up evidence-backed nutrition interventions that are highly cost-effective at saving and improving lives.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation committed an initial $10 million (on top of their previously announced $922 million commitment) to join the UNICEF-managed Nutrition Commodity Fund to expand the fund’s product offering to include maternal nutrition products such as Multiple Micronutrient Supplements (MMS) to improve women’s health, improve birth outcomes and prevent acute malnutrition, match-funded by contributions from national governments.
Rotary International committed $2.5 million from The Rotary Foundation as part of a holistic nutrition program in Ethiopia, alongside the END Fund, Eleanor Crook Foundation and the Power of Nutrition. Rotary International will seek future opportunities to leverage the network of more than 1.4 million Rotarians around the world to improve nutrition outcomes by joining the Steering Committee of Stronger Foundations for Nutrition.
Eleanor Crook Foundation, in partnership with KRAFTON (PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS) and other gaming companies, announced it aims to reach more than 1 million children with Ready-to-use-Therapeutic Foods in 2022, funded by donations mobilized through the LifePack video gaming campaign.
Rabobank committed to measure dietary diversity as a key indicator in all smallholder agroforestry carbon projects certified and sold on the Acorn carbon marketplace.
Additional philanthropic commitments from Stronger Foundations for Nutrition members made in the 2021 Nutrition for Growth Year of Action include:
$922 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation over the next five years to advance the foundation’s systems approach — prioritizing efforts across food, health and social protection systems to reach the most vulnerable. The pledge is the foundation’s largest nutrition commitment to date.
$50 million from the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, investing alongside the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office and UNICEF to form a Nutrition Commodity Fund to focus on the treatment, early detection and prevention of child wasting. This investment creates a new ecosystem for wasting financing, allowing countries to unlock matched funding with domestic allocations to procure and distribute highly impactful nutrition interventions to prevent and treat wasting.
This brings the total philanthropic commitments pledged in 2021 to over $1 billion. Since the Nutrition for Growth Summit in 2013, these private philanthropies have pledged more than $3.4 billion to nutrition, joining governments, civil society organizations and the private sector to raise new resources toward ending malnutrition. The community of philanthropic funders for nutrition has grown from just two at the 2013 Nutrition for Growth Summit to more than a dozen funders today.
© Adrien Taylor
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