This resource is a toolkit aimed at supporting corporate social impact investors in developing their investment strategy. The toolkit includes seven implementation tools developed from the report, “Seven Critical Design Choices for Corporate Impact Investors.” The tools provide step-by-step actions to structure, integrate, and standardize impact investing practices within corporations.
Entrepreneurship is a powerful driver of economic opportunity, yet many small business owners face systemic barriers to growth, including limited access to capital, business education, and professional networks. To address these challenges, the Goldman Sachs Foundation launched 10,000 Small Businesses – a nationwide initiative designed to provide practical business education, peer support, and access to funding to help small enterprises scale and succeed. The program has supported over 16,600 graduates across all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. This case study outlines the core components that make this initiative effective and replicable.
Key components of the model:
Notable results and impact:
NationSwell surveyed 60 impact leaders between February 26 and March 5 to better understand employee sentiment and engagement trends in early 2025. Participants ranged across organization types, including corporations, non-profit organizations, corporate foundations, and private philanthropies. This resource provides key learnings from the research, as well as four ways impact leaders can boost engagement.
Key learnings and results from that survey include:
Four ways impact leaders can boost engagement:
Q1 2025 marked one of the most turbulent periods for the social impact sector since the COVID-19 pandemic. What emerged was a mix of reactive, proactive, and strategic responses: creating shared value, evolving DEI approaches, strengthening supports and deepening engagement, and advancing collective action.
This resource is a practical guide for impact leaders looking to build or refresh their storytelling strategy. It distills several key components to building meaningful impact stories, including understanding key audiences, mapping out appropriate channels and timing, and developing meaningful and action-oriented messaging and content. The guide also includes examples from the NationSwell community to illustrate storytelling in action. The aim is to tell stories that are creative, human-centered, and audience-first.
The components covered in this guide include:
NationSwell’s 3rd annual Private sector social impact and sustainability leadership survey coincided with a period of significant turmoil in the U.S. political arena, and occurred against a backdrop of ongoing backlash to corporate social impact, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB), and environmental initiatives.
The survey sought to better understand the sentiments, experiences, and priorities of senior leaders overseeing environment, social, and governance (ESG), corporate social impact, sustainability, DEIB, and related functions. Through those leaders, the survey also sought to better understand organizational priorities and behaviors.
The 2024 survey explored three themes in particular depth: perceptions of – and attitudes toward – the overall environment for corporate impact and sustainability initiatives, the amount of influence wielded by social impact and sustainability leaders within their own organizations, and the role of political and cultural forces on their work.
Summary of top findings
Methodology and sample
NationSwell fielded this survey from early July through early August 2024. Participants included vice presidents (VPs) and above at public companies, private companies, and company-sponsored foundations. The survey garnered responses from 49 individuals, representing 47 unique institutions.
In an era marked by sociopolitical uncertainty, businesses and their leaders have a responsibility to their employees, customers, investors, and communities to prepare for a range of plausible impacts that could emerge following the 2024 U.S. general election. Regardless of an organization’s size, sector, or prior engagement in political and social issues, the likelihood is high that electoral outcomes and subsequent societal effects will call upon leaders to make tough calls, negotiate trade offs, and act in response to a range of stakeholder interests. Those leaders will be well-served by the foresight and preparation that scenario planning affords.
NationSwell created this toolkit in an effort to make scenario planning as accessible and effective as possible during election season and beyond. For more comprehensive guidance on the role of business in promoting a healthy democracy, visit our Civics Inc. report.
Who is this for?
The recommended audience for this resource are senior leaders and managers with responsibility over relevant functional areas, including public affairs, communications, social impact, human resources, and legal.
While businesses can and do conduct scenario planning on a large number of topics relevant to their interests, this particular resource focuses on the potential near and mid-term impacts of a U.S. general election on business, free enterprise, and our constitutional republic.
Guidance for use
This resource contains instructions and resources to support election scenario planning exercises. Because there is no one-size-fits-all approach to scenario planning, we advise leaders to review this information and adapt it to the existing practices of their organization. The intent is to make scenario planning as accessible as possible, not to divert organizations away from methods that are already working well.
What’s in the toolkit?
Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) professionals are facing heightened political and legal opposition to their day-to-day work. At times, it’s challenging to truly know if and how companies, and DEIB leaders themselves, are shifting their commitments or approaches.
The reality is that some businesses are pausing or re-evaluating their DEIB strategies. A number of companies are reducing investments in DEIB or choosing to proceed more quietly. But the pendulum is swinging in both directions. There is evidence that the material work of DEIB has endured and will continue to endure.
Based on interviews with chief diversity officers and other DEIB executives, this report is intended to support leaders and organizations in confidently charting a path forward at a moment of heightened scrutiny.
The resource teaches the four components of a resilient approach to corporate DEIB and includes tactical guidance, real-world examples, and implementation tools.
The four components:
2024 marked the biggest election year in history, as citizens in countries representing half the the world’s population headed to the polls. At home, the 2024 U.S. election once again put destabilizing pressure on American political processes and institutions.
We know that every election, local and national, demands more than our attention; it demands urgent action. Employers hold outsized potential to promote civic participation and protect our democracy, but for many leaders, that work feels more fraught than ever before.
Developed from the insights and experiences of business leaders and democracy experts, this report is designed to meet businesses where they are. It provides a strategic framework to help employers customize their efforts around three goals and five core assets.
Three goals for employers to pursue in service of healthier democracy:
Five core assets that all businesses can leverage in pursuit of these goals:
What else is included in the report?
When NationSwell surveyed corporate social impact and sustainability executives in July 2023, nearly 7 out of 10 said they’re anticipating a challenging year in 2024. Since then, we’ve witnessed an intensifying wave of anti-DEIB activism, read the dire warnings conveyed in the UNFCCC’s first Global Stocktake, and felt the surge of collective anxiety around the coming elections in the U.S. and around the world. At the same time, powerful examples of collective action, new and transformational technologies, and the continued resolve of purpose-driven leaders demand our attention and urge optimism into the picture.
At NationSwell, we too are resolved. We are resolved to support our membership community, partners, and concerned public in advancing progress on the issues that we believe matter most in the year ahead.
To ground our collective efforts, we have prepared this 2024 look ahead with four goals in mind:
Our look ahead focuses on 6 major topics that NationSwell anticipates being central to the work of purpose-driven leaders and organizations in 2024:
