The UN’s 17 “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs) are crucial cornerstones to ending poverty, reducing inequality and to ensuring the protection of natural resources globally. Private investment is a critical component to reach these goals. In fact, if we managed to divert just 1.5% of global private investment activity towards SDG-relevant projects, the top nine goals could be reached by 2030.

Interestingly, there is a substantial level of interest among private investors, as they understand that sustainable development is key to the long-term stability of their businesses. Also, ROI is much the same in impact investing as it is in regular investing and end customer demand for ethical investing is increasing steadily.

A big hurdle for investors, however, is the lack of visibility of local SDG investment opportunities and lack of access to local market intelligence. Both of these are needed to adequately assess risks and returns. To remedy this, the UN Development Program (UNDP) has developed the SDG Investor Platform — a platform for identifying sustainable investment opportunities, informed by local development needs, policy priorities and business intelligence, all gathered and verified locally by the UNDP country offices.

To make these valuable insights accessible to investors worldwide, Daylight designed the architecture and interface of the SDG Investor Platform and supported its implementation.

In 2023, the UX Design Awards Jury recognized our design and nominated our work on the SDG Investor Platform for an award.

Daylight started the design process by understanding the different stakeholders’ needs in depth. We interviewed impact investors, mainstream investors, SDG asset managers, sustainability analysts, rating agencies, UN country offices, and others to learn about their workflows, needs and priorities.

Carefully balancing investors’ wishes with the UN’s role as a neutral facilitator of information exchange, we designed the platform around some key principles: Leading with economic data points, building trust by featuring tangible case studies, and facilitating direct exchange with local experts. These all proved to be crucial features in order to make the platform a useful everyday tool for investors and financial professionals around the world.

Our solution is a clean, appealing and easy-to-use UX and UI design. It combines the human touch and approachability of a social impact site with the trustworthiness and clarity expected of a professional financial tool.

The SDG Investor Platform has grown to over 400 featured investment opportunity areas across 24 countries since its launch. This success was made possible by all stakeholders’ readiness to participate in this UN-driven mission.

Today, the UNDP’s country offices are continuously working to add additional opportunity areas as they continue to gather local market intelligence and to paint an increasingly detailed picture of the various investment landscapes for investors to base their decisions on.

Due to the UNDP’s tireless work, the platform has now grown into a lively platform, facilitating meaningful, sustainable investment and nudging the world towards achieving the SDGs.