Giving Compass' Take:

• In order to finance the SDGS, the development sector will have to turn to innovative financing models like social enterprises, global partnerships with corporations and other business-model approaches. 

• What are the challenges for the development aid sector to adopt a business mindset? 

• Read about how to leverage blended finance to meet the SDGs.

After years of diplomatic wrangling, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have become gospel for next 15 years. There’s no doubting their high ambition, with 17 main goals and no fewer than 169 subsidiary targets. But these lofty aims seem little more than a dream unless we answer one fundamental question: Where’s the money coming from?

Financing the SDGs is quite literally a “trillion-dollar question.” Yet the best the Addis Ababa Summit (where government leaders met to discuss financing of the SDGs) could do was reiterate a 40-year-old demand: that the West follow through on its 0.7 percent (of gross national income) commitment for aid!

That is looking in the wrong direction. The problem with public aid and philanthropy-based development isn’t just that there’s not enough money (that problem itself is worsening after the global financial crises); it’s that the development sector is wasteful and worse, doesn’t replenish its own pot.

Some answers lie buried in the last goal on the list—number 17 if you’re still counting: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development. This may seem like a woolly idea, but it will make or break the other 16 goals.

While NGOs should certainly not follow the path of money-hungry corporations (there is already a feeling that many are too focused on fundraising), development should borrow from other important aspects of the business mindset.

Read the full article about financing the Sustainable Development Goals by Rubayat Khan at Stanford Social Innovation Review.