Social Investment Collaborative

Hunger and Nutrition

two sets of hands holding bowl of cherry tomatoes together

Overview

The social sector – including over 1.5 million nonprofits in the US alone – helps address the world’s most important needs, including poverty, education, housing, hunger, and more. Yet, too often these efforts are undertaken in isolation, with few insights into who else is addressing similar problems, what's worked before and what hasn't, and how to effectively measure success. To address this need, True Impact has begun studying Social Impact Collaboratives (SICs), groups of non-profit organizations with similar missions. By working with our clients who fund the programs in these SICs, we can gain insight into the needs and challenges of the sector, as well as providing useful insight about the true social impact of our clients' investments. To do this, we have created several actionable KPIs to allow our clients to prove, and improve, the value of their philanthropic investments.

Our newest SIC focuses on Hunger & Nutrition, and currently comprises 182 programs funded by eleven of our clients.

Our analysis allowed us to identify patterns across seven different domains (such as food distribution programs, nutrition/cooking education, and growing in community gardens), and to identify areas of opportunity within each. It also allowed us to identify benchmarks for important key performance indicators, such as Social Return on Investment (SROI) and the use of evidence-based data to assess the impact of each program.

True Impact's philosophy is that non-profit programs benefit from a social impact-based logic model, which focuses on beneficiary-based outcomes, rather than program-based outputs.The Hunger & Nutrition SIC provided us with the opportunity to help the programs within the SIC utilize such a model and to identify areas with Hunger & Nutrition programs are most likely to benefit from an outcome-based approach. Investors can benefit from more rigorous outcomes-based reporting from their non-profit partners. They can also encourage and reward such reporting, which will not only provide them with better data to guide their investment choices, but will also serve their non-profit partners by giving them focus in reaching their own mission goals.

Get more information on our Social Investment Collaborative (SIC)

Hunger & Nutrition Benchmark Report

This report summarizes key performance indicators (KPIs) from 182 Hunger & Nutrition Education programs that have used True Impact (trueimpact.com) to create social impact reports for their philanthropic donors. These results are intended to help both funders and nonprofits make more successful investment decisions and drive continuous improvement throughout the sector.

To receive a copy of this report and to learn more about our ongoing benchmarking initiatives, please fill out the form below and we'd be glad to give you a brief walk-through of the results:

Social Investment Collaborative

Hunger and Nutrition

Overview

Hunger & Nutrition Benchmark Report

To receive a copy of this report and to learn more about our ongoing benchmarking initiatives, please fill out the form below and we'd be glad to give you a brief walk-through of the results:

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