Dohmen Company Foundation launches $60 million impact investment fund to support healthy food initiatives





The Dohmen Company Basis carries on its struggle against eating plan-similar sickness with the start of a $60 million impact investment fund, the Milwaukee-dependent group announced Friday through a reside-streamed occasion at the White Home.

The fund will infuse cash into for-income social enterprises that are functioning to improve wellness outcomes through foods-linked methods. Dohmen is arranging to devote in five to 10 foods-targeted companies – each B2B and B2C – that are looking to scale their function and travel improved effect, with the best purpose of enhancing the health of extra than 5 million customers more than the future 5 to 10 years, in accordance to a news release.

The effect financial commitment fund builds on an ongoing $75 million motivation to minimizing the morbidity of diet regime-associated sickness. Dohmen declared that pledge in September all through the White Dwelling Conference on Starvation, Nutrition & Well being, when the Biden administration rolled out a national method to close starvation, boost balanced feeding on and physical exercise, and minimize diet plan-related sickness by 2030.

“Our nation is sick. The regular American diet program and its underlying dependency on processed meals is largely to blame,” Dohmen president and chief executive officer Rachel Roller claimed in a statement. “The DCF Impression Investment decision Fund seeks to progress a healthier foods technique by strategic investments in options that align with our mission to reverse and stop diet-associated illness.”

Roller participated in a panel dialogue in the course of Friday’s White Dwelling event, exactly where she urged many others to prioritize investments in the healthy food stuff and nutrition ecosystem.

“Far more expenditure is needed to promote the balanced foodstuff marketplace and make unprocessed, complete meals commonly and equitably available. We persuade other foundations, socially acutely aware businesses, and traders to sign up for us in advancing a healthful consuming movement by pursuing a equivalent self-sustaining expenditure design with a cash and social return,” stated Roller.

The fund will prioritize social return on financial commitment in excess of monetary gains on its invested capital. Money income reached via the fund’s investments will gasoline the foundation’s charitable supplying pursuits and public recognition methods.

In 2019, Dohmen converted from a 6-era spouse and children-owned enterprise into a foundation-owned philanthropic organization. Underneath that composition, the company’s profits are donated to the basis for charitable applications. Central to Dohmen’s recent technique is the belief that foods is a critical preventative health-related intervention.

“We believe that that practical entry to healthy food stuff for all Us citizens is the respond to to our nation’s finest community well being threat,” said board chair Cynthia Dohmen LaConte. “Food, the extremely detail that’s making us unwell, can develop into our prescription to health and fitness. Our intention is to make entry to healthful, entire food as ubiquitous as present day harmful rapid meals.”

When Dohmen is looking to make a nationwide impact as a result of its newly launched $60 million fund, the aim of its before $75 million pledge targets Wisconsin and the Milwaukee neighborhood much more precisely.

With $15 million of that $75 prepared investment decision, the basis launched Meals For Health and fitness, a Milwaukee-based community charity that supplies a property-delivered medically tailored meal application for economically deprived populations in Wisconsin, and The Meals Benefit Co., a Milwaukee-primarily based social company that contracts with providers to deliver personnel with nutrition coaching, biometric screening and fresh food stuff shipping.

“Considering that launching these two applications, we have witnessed phenomenal outcomes, scientific outcomes in blocking and reversing diet-related condition,” explained Roller.

Dohmen supplied seed cash for Food For Wellbeing, but the firm will need to elevate resources from other partners and men and women to access its objective of enhancing the health and fitness of 50,000 individuals in the span of five many years. Income from the Food stuff Benefit Co. will go towards the nonprofit’s mission, in accordance to a organization spokesperson.

Cynthia LaConte