Impact investing in community health gets $325 million boost from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is expanding its commitment to impact investing, announcing a new allocation of $325 million to advance health equity in communities that have faced a historic lack of investment.
“Impact investing is a powerful tool for funders and investors to work with communities and enable them to thrive. By working alongside other investors to catalyze investment, we can increase our impact and build healthier communities,” said Kimberlee Cornett, director of Impact Investing, on the foundation’s website.
The foundation uses impact investments to accelerate its programmatic priorities and invest in areas such as housing, water, and infrastructure—which shape wellbeing—to help pave the way to a future where health is no longer a privilege, but a right, it said in a release announcing the funding.
The additional impact investment commitment, more than double the 2023 pledge, will bring the foundation’s two-year total impact allocation to $625 million.
The foundation said it hopes to attract at least $1 billion from other investors, including banks, commercial lenders, insurance companies, private investors, and philanthropic organizations by year-end 2025 to co-invest and provide capital to communities that have faced a lack of investment, including those affected by structural racism.
To increase access to capital for communities that have been marginalized by the traditional financial system—including communities of color and communities with low incomes—the foundation makes impact investments through deposits, loans, equity investments and guarantees, with a focus on three key areas:
- Advancing racial equity by working toward closing the racial wealth gap, including by increasing and preserving Black and Brown homeownership as a lever to strengthen financial wellbeing and foster intergenerational wealth transfer.
- Strengthening the community development finance system with a focus on communities that historically have experienced a lack of investment, especially communities with low incomes and communities of color.
- Complementing grantmaking portfolios across the foundation with program-linked investments currently focused on equitable water infrastructure and the foundation’s home state of New Jersey.
In 2023, RWJF made $48 million in impact investments in the form of loans, equity investments, and guarantees alongside several co-investors—in addition to nearly 40 grants related to impact investing—to organizations across the United States. For more on these investments, see RWJF’s 2023 Impact Investment Yearly Summary.
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