Old Area: Leadership and governance

Q4 2025 Social Impact Trends

Q4 2025 Social Impact Trends

TREND REPORT
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NationSwell’s quarterly trend spotter provides impact professionals with visibility into the most noteworthy, timely, and material shifts in the field. For Q4 of 2025, our report explores the following six trends:

  1. Food security draws mainstream attention amid government shutdown
  2. AI-driven layoffs hit tech and service industries, but overall employment impact remains modest
  3. Philanthropies and nonprofits are investing more in AI, but governance needs to catch up
  4. Political leaders continuing pressure on corporate leadership and civil society
  5. Sustainability efforts continue, but more quietly and with less accountability
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A Comprehensive Approach to the 1% Tax Floor

A Comprehensive Approach to the 1% Tax Floor

The introduction of the 1% floor on corporate charitable deductions, imposed by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R.1) for tax years beginning December 31, 2025, has created a range of new considerations for companies to weigh in determining their corporate philanthropy strategy. 

To support NationSwell members in navigating this shift, we interviewed a Head of Corporate Impact at a Fortune 500 company who has made several critical moves to set up their resources and programs for long-term sustainability. 

The following resource outlines the steps taken over the course of approximately three months, each of which required close cross-enterprise collaboration. The processes and decisions described are intended to help leaders frame their own approaches, but should be considered within each organization’s own financial, legal, and tax context.

The steps outlined are:

  • Step 1: Align internally on the policy landscape
  • Step 2: Calculate the incremental tax impact to the business
  • Step 3: Fund philanthropy budget with tax-efficient capital
  • Step 4: Reclassify some philanthropy as ordinary business expense
  • Step 5: Take a multi-year view on philanthropic tax strategy
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PepsiCo | Feeding potential

PepsiCo | Feeding potential

How PepsiCo’s Food for Good is creating a blueprint for global food security

Food for Good — the PepsiCo Foundation initiative for advancing food security — launched in Dallas, Texas, as an exercise in deep listening. Through sustained conversations with trusted community volunteers and leaders, PepsiCo learned that the 19 million school-aged children in the U.S. who depend on free or reduced-price meals at school were facing critical gaps in access to nutritious food during the summer months, when school was not in session.

Beginning in the summer of 2009, PepsiCo leveraged its food production, logistics, and distribution expertise — as well as a partnership with Frito-Lay, the convenient foods business unit of PepsiCo, that allowed for borrowed access to trucks and warehouse space — to prototype a summer meal delivery model. The privately-funded program quickly expanded into new cities, eventually outgrowing its original facility but maintaining its original commitment to staying rooted in community feedback and mission to fight hunger through access and equity.

Food for Good combines large-scale meal distribution, job creation, targeted child nutrition, disaster relief, and impactful storytelling to distribute nutritious meals and address crisis-driven hunger at scale.

 

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New York Life | From classrooms to cubicles

New York Life | From classrooms to cubicles

How New York Life is scaling grief support through its agents and expertise

New York Life Foundation’s impact in the childhood bereavement space began more than a decade ago, sparked by a partnership with Comfort Zone Camp. What began as a pilot grant quickly evolved into a larger commitment, driven by the realization that this was a space where New York Life could lead. With a corporate mission to offer peace of mind and financial support, bereavement support is deeply aligned with New York Life’s purpose.

Motivated by the lack of reliable data and practical support tools, the Foundation launched a research partnership with Judi’s House to create the Children’s Bereavement Estimation Model (CBEM) to understand where childhood grief was most concentrated. The Foundation also conducted surveys with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) to learn about grief in the classroom. Among its learnings from the initial 2012 survey: over 90% of U.S. educators say childhood grief is a serious problem that deserves more attention from schools, but only 3% had received training on supporting students through their school district. Asked how many students typically need their support due to the loss of a loved one each school year, 87% of educators said at least one, and 25% said six or more.

In 2018, the Foundation launched the Grief-Sensitive Schools Initiative (GSSI), enlisting New York Life’s  national agent network to deliver grief education and resources directly to schools. As momentum grew, agents began asking: Can we take this to nonprofits and other youth-serving organizations in addition to schools? The model was expanded to youth-serving nonprofits through GSSI+. 

In 2024, the Foundation expanded its bereavement support into workplaces. The Grief-Supportive Workplace Initiative was built around New York Life data that revealed a deep unmet need: although up to 20% of a given workforce might be grieving at one time, about 64% of employees report that their workplaces do not offer any bereavement support or training.

 

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Collective Action Models and Approaches

Collective Action Models and Approaches

This resource is a practical guide for impact leaders to quickly understand the most prevalent and effective models of collective action. It distills each model into clear purposes, strengths, risks, and use cases—providing actionable insight into when and how to leverage these structures to advance your goals. The aim is to save leaders time, sharpen decision-making, and help you align the right model with the challenge or opportunity in front of you.

The models covered in this guide include:

  • Public-Private Partnerships
  • Co-investment + Pooled Funding
  • Learning, Advocacy, & Action Networks
  • Place-Based Initiatives
  • Shared Capacity & Services Platforms
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Q3 2025 Social Impact Trends

Q3 2025 Social Impact Trends

NationSwell’s quarterly trend spotter provides impact professionals with visibility into the most noteworthy, timely, and material shifts in the field. For Q3 of 2025, our report explores the following six trends:

  1. Corporations are quieter on ESG/DEI – and delaying some reports
  2. “One Big Beautiful Bill” has material implications for corporate giving strategies
  3. Values-driven public pressure is influencing reputations and sales
  4. Workforce development is surging as a strategic priority, driven by widening skills gaps
  5. Impact teams are increasing AI adoption while attention grows on need for ethical governance
  6. The U.S. is experiencing climate & ESG policy setbacks while global rules march on
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Making the Case for Investment in Impact

Making the Case for Investment in Impact

This resource is intended to guide corporate social impact leaders in securing and growing their organization’s investment in their work. The case-making points and data included focus on the importance of social investments to key stakeholders: employees and customers.

The resource prepares impact leaders for budgetary conversations with context on the landscape, data, and talking points. We also provide tools for securing investment by aligning with business objectives, exploring measurement approaches for calculating ROI, and anticipating changes brought on by ongoing uncertainty.

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Q2 2025 Social Impact Trends

Q2 2025 Social Impact Trends

Q2 2025 trends indicate that employee engagement and wellbeing are at alarming lows; nonprofits face heightened threats amid federal scrutiny and funding cuts; DEI efforts are under political attack but still supported by consumers and investors; cross-sector coalitions are forming to defend civil society; funders are stepping up with bolder strategies to counter government pullbacks; and companies, though quieter publicly, remain committed to impact through value-aligned, resilient strategies.

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Corporate Social Impact Team Design

Corporate Social Impact Team Design

This resource is meant to help leaders look at their own organizations to consider: what’s working, may be changing, and could be next for your impact team design. It provides a practical, anonymized compilation of organizational charts serving as a foundation for shared learning and strategic reflection on:

  • the current landscape of impact team design,
  • the size and complexity of structures by industry, 
  • the functional areas of teams in relation to the broader company, 
  • reporting lines to the chief suite

This resource will continue to evolve as more models are shared. Email us at [email protected] if you would like your corporate social impact team to be represented in the next iteration of this resource.

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Impact Team Offsite-in-a-Box

Impact Team Offsite-in-a-Box

Team offsite conversations can serve the purposes of reconnecting colleagues, grounding them in a shared organizational ambition and inviting individual and collective ownership over the direction of the team’s work. This resource supports impact leaders with modular sessions to design effective, energizing team offsites that drive clarity, connection, and strategic alignment. It is based on agendas that NationSwell has created for its own team conversations or in partnership with member organizations. 

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