Nonprofits face unique challenges when it comes to incorporating AI in their work.
NationSwell’s latest report, AI for Nonprofit Empowerment, funded by Annie E. Casey Foundation, provides knowledge on how nonprofit organizations can use AI to streamline processes and improve day-to-day functions, while maintaining focus on the work that truly matters.
Every organization possesses unique strengths that hold potential to drive transformative impact. When applied effectively, these act as superpowers.
Whether you are leveraging innovative technologies, tapping unique expertise, mobilizing extensive networks, or amplifying a trusted brand, understanding your organization’s superpowers allows you to target efforts where they can make the greatest difference.
This toolkit provides practical frameworks, self-assessment tools, and illustrative examples to guide leaders through an exploration of organizational strengths, resources, and opportunities. Use this resource to identify and elevate the capabilities within your organization that have the most potential to effect positive change.
Exercises covered in this toolkit include:
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:
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:
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.
In virtually every community in our country, it is often the work of a Community Health Worker (CHW) that unlocks the potential for a child, a family, a senior, a farmworker, and millions of others, to access a healthy life. This study isn’t meant to be another generalized, awareness-raising gesture for CHWs. It’s meant to spotlight where CHWs are effectively integrated into their communities while being paid in sustainable ways so these models can continue to be funded and expanded.
Our teams at Sanofi, NationSwell, Atlas Clarity, and NACHW saw a gap, a story to tell. We embarked on a collaborative journey to seek these models of CHW partnership and integration, with our differing perspectives and burning questions.
We asked: What works in communities? What works for CHWs? How might funders, partners, and governments—each of us—better support CHWs while also honoring the self-determination of this unique workforce? And we curated our findings, with replicable examples and insights to build on.
In this report, we’ve laid out what we heard and what we believe are some of the best actions you can take for improved community health powered by CHWs who are sustainably paid for their work, and we’re looking forward to using this tool as a springboard for discussion across sectors. Appreciation to all CHW and non-CHW contributors for sharing their knowledge and stories.
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.
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:
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.
Additional income is not a cure-all for poverty; health, housing, food security, and many other factors also play critical roles in an individual’s stability and well-being. However, the role of cash and savings is receiving growing attention and showing positive impact, as organizations test approaches like guaranteed income programs, changes to tax credits, and more. This resource provides an overview of various cash-based levers that drive economic mobility.
Levers include:
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.
