Immediate release – 25th June 2024

The Schwartz Family Foundation funds $1.3 million worth of social value and verified impact to advance healthcare access in Africa via Common Good Marketplace

Foundation grants over $300,000 to Africa-based NGOs, MiracleFeet and LifeNet, utilizing CGM’s digital impact marketplace, to progress the UN Sustainable Development Goals

25th June 2024: New York City, New York; Greensboro, North Carolina: Today, the Schwartz Family Foundation, an innovative philanthropic foundation committed to delivering justice and opportunity to marginalized communities, and Common Good Marketplace (CGM), the first SDG-aligned impact marketplace for verified impact, jointly announce the first transaction involving CGM’s Verified Impact Assets (VIAs) validating the Foundation’s commitment to advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Using CGM’s rigorous measurement and certification process, the Schwartz Family Foundation helped advance SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being by funding over $300,000 into Africa-based healthcare NGOs, MiracleFeet and LifeNet, creating more than $1.3 million in total social value. This milestone marks a turning point in using market-based mechanisms to advance the SDGs by paying impact organizations for  proven results.

Delivering Real Social Impact

CGM supports organizations to elevate their social impact by connecting them to relevant impact makers via its digital impact marketplace. Here, organizations can direct funding to high-impact projects delivering tangible and verified results to advance the SDG goals.

VIAs are generated by high-impact projects, and delivered to funders, through CGM’s vigorous six step process which mirrors the asset creation process for the carbon markets: design, validation, monitoring, verification, certification and issuance. The outcome is a pay-for-results funding model that enables corporations and philanthropic funders to direct capital to relevant, verified organizations aligned with their own impact and sustainability objectives.

“The efficiency and clarity of acquiring independently verified impact claims to specific social outcomes is a solution desperately needed by philanthropists, impact funds, CSR executives and anyone committed to the tangible, credible advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals.” Said Alan Schwartz Executive Director of the Foundation and Executive Chairman of Guggenheim Partners, “CGM is both a thought leader and a unique solution to achieving real outcomes in the emerging Impact Economy.”

Tangibly Advancing the Sustainable Development Goals

To help advance SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being, specifically access to essential health care and reduced neonatal and maternal mortality, the Schwartz Family Foundation funded MiracleFeet, the largest global non-profit organization dedicated to helping children born with clubfoot, and LifeNet, a charity that transforms healthcare facilities across Africa.

As a result, CGM delivered 261 VIAs from MiracleFeet, generated by 167 children being cured of clubfoot in Nigeria and 927 VIAs from LifeNet for treating 13,140 mothers and babies in complicated labors and deliveries in Malawi. In each case, the number of VIAs delivered achieved a 4:1 “Social Return on Investment” – four dollars of verified value for each dollar funded.

Using CGM’s verification process, The Schwartz Family Foundation identified and directed funding into these NGOs based on the social impact value they generate year-on-year in alignment with their ESG focus areas.

According to CGM’s methodology, MiracleFeet successfully treated 442 children in Nigeria between 2022 and 2023, creating $1,761,042 of social value and 690 VIAs.

Meanwhile, LifeNet successfully treated 80,684 mothers and babies during labor and delivery for health complications such as post-partum hemorrhaging, which created $4,093,529 of total social value and 5,694 VIAs in 2023.

Transforming Funding for the World’s Greatest Challenges

The pay-for-success funding model delivered through CGM’s digital marketplace helps buyers use their capital more efficiently and effectively, but also streamlines funding so impact makers can focus on executing and delivering value rather than on continuous fundraising.

“This fundamentally changes how we structure the funding of our work,” adds MiracleFeet CEO Daphne Sorensen. “As buyers purchase verified outcomes from our programs, it allows us to deepen and scale our impact dramatically faster than through the traditional donor funding model.”

“This is why we started CGM in the first place,” says CGM CEO and co-founder Greg Spencer. “We wanted this marketplace to drive incremental capital to high quality organizations, like MiracleFeet and LifeNet, delivering clearly measured impact so that they could scale their operations to serve more people and deliver a verified impact to funders. It’s a huge milestone in achieving impact through a new market-based approach.”

Mr. Spencer added that “the Foundation’s lifelong commitment to delivering justice and opportunity to marginalized communities is the logical integration of sophisticated philanthropy looking for verified social impacts. Our VIAs demonstrate the efficiency and efficacy of easily acquiring proven outcomes from carefully vetted organizations with valuable, quantifiable results.”

For more information on Common Good Marketplace, please contact Greg Spencer at greg@commongoodmarketplace.com.

For more information on MiracleFeet or to support their work through the marketplace, please contact Daphne Sorensen at Daphne.Sorensen@miraclefeet.org.

For more information on LifeNet or to support their work through the marketplace, please contact Maggie Ehrenfried at mehrenfried@lninternational.org.

For media inquiries, please contact info@commongoodmarketplace.com.

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About Common Good Marketplace

Common Good Marketplace (CGM) is an innovative, revolutionary digital impact marketplace that delivers Verified Impact Assets (VIA™) between high impact organizations and impact funders.  Traditionally, philanthropic and CSR initiatives have relied on reporting activities, outputs and subjective claims rather than focusing on measurable, verifiable outcomes. CGM’s solution enables the measurement and auditing of social outcomes, transforming them into VIAs for transfer in a proprietary marketplace. This innovation not only ensures accountability but also broadens funding models by connecting high impact initiatives with outcome-focused funders.

About Schwartz Family Foundation

The Schwartz Family Foundation is a private foundation located in New York City, New York that is an innovative family foundation committed to delivering justice and opportunity to marginalized communities across the world.

About MiracleFeet

MiracleFeet is the largest global non-profit organization working to ensure that every child born with clubfoot has access to the medical care they need to thrive. MiracleFeet partners with local health workers and organizations to bring the inexpensive solution — costing only $500 USD per child on average — to children who need it. Treatment is provided for free or at very low cost. Founded in 2010, MiracleFeet has transformed the lives of 94,300+ children across 430+ clinics in 37 countries.

About LifeNet

LifeNet International transforms health facilities across Africa to provide quality, sustainable care and save lives. LifeNet recognizes the powerful lever for change that community health facilities, already caring for vulnerable communities across the continent, represent. We harness that power using principles of conversion franchising: joining existing businesses and improving their care through better operating systems, clinical best practices, and ongoing support. When individual community health facilities join the LifeNet network, they are transformed into well-managed, properly trained, fully equipped, and quality-assured healthcare providers. For less than $1 per patient visit, LifeNet moves the needle on Universal Health Coverage goals–making quality healthcare accessible to some of the most underserved communities in the world.

This press release was first reported by Impact Entrepreneur.