Category: Event Takeaways

Resetting the Public Narrative Around U.S. Philanthropy

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

Philanthropy in the U.S. is facing a shift in public perception. What was once broadly seen as a force for good is now, in some circles, framed as politicized, opaque, or even at odds with democratic values. These narratives are gaining traction—and they carry implications for how funders carry out their work and for civil society more broadly.

On August 4, NationSwell hosted a virtual Leader Roundtable designed to bring philanthropic leaders together to examine what’s driving the shift and what can be done in response—within our organizations and collectively. 

Some of the most salient insights from the discussion appear below:

Key takeaways

Center communities and partners in storytelling, while still making the case for philanthropy’s role. Focusing on the communities being served and partners on the ground can help rebuild credibility during a low-trust moment for the sector. How much philanthropy steps back varies by institution – some remove themselves from the story entirely, while others seek to elevate communities and partners alongside being honest about what philanthropy’s institutional support makes possible. 

Demonstrate values through action, including the power of air cover. Putting values into practice builds more trust than talking about them. Backing issues that partners and communities care about with institutional voice and funding can take pressure and scrutiny off of them, giving them room to speak or engage more freely.

Acknowledge the philanthropy sector’s collective complicity in the challenges it now fights. Some of the conditions driving public distrust and rollback were shaped, in part, by philanthropy’s own underinvestment in collective power-building and community voice. Naming that complicity, as a sector, can inform how funders invest going forward.

Build credibility through ongoing organizational self-reflection. Revisiting founding narratives and grantmaking mistakes can also lay a more credible foundation for external communication. Sharing what an organization has learned and plans to change in order to meet their communities’ needs resonates with audiences seeking transparency and accountability from the sector. 

Establish clear guardrails for when and how to use institutional voice. Speaking on every issue is not sustainable, and staying silent carries its own risk. Clear criteria helps leaders decide when a foundation’s voice is additive or expected – or when it should step back and elevate other voices – and ensures engagement is intentional rather than reactive.

Broaden the audience beyond peers and grantees. Philanthropy has traditionally spoken to other funders and peers, leaving the broader public and policymakers questioning the role and legitimacy of foundations. Deliberately engaging with civically active audiences and policymakers can help address stigmas around the sector and support a more comprehensive and accurate public understanding of the work.  

Simplify messaging and narrow the aim. Insider jargon and abstract theories further alienates audiences outside the sector. Plain, accessible messaging that emphasizes bridge-building and shared values grounds audiences in language they connect with and trust. 

Coordinate across the field and lean on the power of collective voice. Collaborating with other funders on crisis response and shared messaging has helped organizations hold their ground during a period of sustained attack on the sector. Whether through formal coalitions or informal peer conversations, cross-institutional collaboration allows individual organizations to speak with more confidence than they could alone.

Reframing the Narrative Around Skilled Trade Careers

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

At a moment when employers face critical talent shortages and workers are searching for accessible pathways to stable, meaningful careers, leaders have an imperative to expand awareness, clarify opportunity, and help build the pipelines that will create a stronger skilled-trades workforce.

At a July 21 virtual Leader Roundtable, leaders shared candidly on how outdated perceptions of skilled trades and advanced manufacturing continue to limit that talent pipeline — and why employers must take greater responsibility for telling a more accurate and compelling story.

Some of the most salient insights from that conversation appear below:

Key takeaways

Position skilled trades as a first-choice pathway. Skilled trades are still too often presented as a fallback for students who struggle in traditional academic settings. Reframing them as rigorous, technology-enabled careers with strong earning potential and meaningful work can broaden their appeal to students and workers across the full spectrum of skills, interests, and educational experiences.

Show people doing the work. Job descriptions and salary figures alone rarely make an unfamiliar career feel attainable. Peer-to-peer stories, facility visits, hands-on experiences, and authentic representations of workers can help prospective talent understand what modern skilled-trades careers actually look like — and see people like themselves succeeding in them.

Make the journey visible and navigable. Workers need a clear picture of how to enter a field, which credentials carry value, what each step can unlock, and where their skills can take them over time. Mapping progression within and across sectors can replace the perception of a fixed or dead-end job with a career defined by mobility, choice, and opportunities to “level up.”

Modernize the image of the work. Many prevailing assumptions about manufacturing and the trades reflect facilities and working conditions from decades ago. Employers have an opportunity to show how technology, robotics, safety practices, and highly specialized expertise have transformed these roles — while being transparent about the meaningful differences among occupations and work environments.

Segment the message for different audiences. A compelling proposition for a high school student may differ from the one that resonates with an adult seeking to reskill, a parent advising a child, or a worker prioritizing stability and family-sustaining wages. Outreach should reflect the ambitions, concerns, life experiences, and practical barriers of the people it is intended to reach.

Pair visibility with sustained support. Introducing someone to a career is only the beginning. Transportation, training costs, confusing credential requirements, limited guidance, and other obstacles can derail workers at multiple points along the way. A holistic approach stays with people through exploration, training, placement, and advancement.

Build tighter feedback loops between industry and training providers. Employers, community colleges, workforce organizations, and other partners often agree that stronger alignment is needed, yet still struggle to exchange timely information about evolving roles and skills. Shared labor-market intelligence and regular, place-based coordination can help providers train for where the work is going rather than where it has been.

Develop a shared understanding of the problem. Different organizations often rely on different data sources, producing competing pictures of workforce shortages, training gaps, and employer demand. Establishing trusted sources of information and interrogating where the data diverges can help partners align their strategies and investments around the same underlying needs.

Treat workforce development as both a business and societal imperative. Expanding access to skilled-trades careers can meet urgent employer needs while strengthening communities and connecting more people to stable, essential work. Acknowledging both forms of return can create space for more employers to invest directly, collaborate openly, and approach workforce development as a shared responsibility.

Combine broad narrative change with local action. A national campaign can raise visibility and challenge entrenched stereotypes, but many of the most important solutions require sustained local relationships among employers, educators, training providers, and community organizations. Lasting progress will depend on pairing a resonant shared narrative with the practical work of building pathways community by community.

Deepening Business Value and Community Impact Through Employee Engagement

Posted on by NationSwell Team

Employee engagement has long been a cornerstone of corporate impact. But in today’s environment, leaders are under growing pressure to show how these programs deliver value — not just for communities, but for the business itself.

On July 21, NationSwell hosted a virtual Leader Roundtable designed to bring corporate impact leaders together to explore how employee-focused programs — volunteerism, pro bono service, board service, and matching gifts — can be designed with greater intention and measured with greater rigor. Together, participants dug into what it takes to move from participation to performance by aligning programs to business priorities, strengthening talent outcomes like retention and skill development, and building the case for sustained investment.

Some of the most salient takeaways from the conversation appear below:

Key takeaways:

Anchor volunteer focus areas in the core company mission and values. Employees engage when a program feels like a continuation of the work they joined the company to do, consistent with the company’s primary mission, rather than a separate priority layered on top. Starting from that alignment supports employee engagement buy-in and participation, and makes programs easier to scale. 

Lean into skills-based volunteering as a professional development tool that supports the business, rather than as a service activity. Organizations are increasingly viewing ‘soft skills’ (e.g., empathy, critical thinking, and relationship-building) as essential human skills in the age of AI. Partnering closely with HR and leveraging organizational and sector-wide studies to position skills-based volunteering as career development strengthens the business case for employee engagement. 

Partner with HR and talent teams to study the relationship between volunteer engagement and talent outcomes. By comparing talent outcomes across multiple years between individuals who volunteer and those who don’t, companies can build a better understanding of the relationship between participation and key talent priorities like retention, engagement scores, and promotion rates. While the results of these studies often show a correlation and not causation, they serve to strengthen the internal business case and narrative around the shared value created by employee-related impact programs.

Segment your  workforce to offer tailored programs based on different employee archetypes. A single volunteerism or employee engagement strategy may not suit a diverse employee base that ranges from frontline to remote roles. Offering various impact opportunities that meet employees where they are – like fundraising opportunities, on-campus projects, virtual options, or local team-building – drives more participation than a one-size-fits-all approach. Providing flexible volunteer time off benefits and extended volunteer campaigns vs. single days of service is another way leaders are expanding opportunities for frontline employees to participate in organization-wide initiatives.

Engage every function from top to bottom, and reward efforts. When business unit leaders or C-level executives commit to volunteering or social impact goals, their teams follow and stay more engaged. Pairing that top-down participation with the same recognition systems used for business performance (e.g., awards, employee-nominated grants, or celebrations tied to volunteer milestones) signals that the work is equally valued across the organization and further encourages consistent engagement.  

Stay tuned into nonprofit partners to avoid drifting too far away from community needs. One risk of orienting employee volunteerism and other employee programs toward the business is that it can widen the gap with what nonprofit partners need most.  Select partners that are strategically aligned to the core mission and impact strategy of the business, and then put trust in them to help you design programs that activate employees in ways that are ultimately beneficial to the goals those partner organizations are driving toward. This will ensure strong outcomes through volunteer engagements and support mutual value between employees, partners, and the business.

Supporting Grantees and Partners Facing Heightened Risk and Pressure

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

Nonprofits and community partners are operating under increasing strain—from funding uncertainty and rising demand to political scrutiny and public pressure. Many are being asked to do more with less, while navigating a more complex and, at times, more fragile operating environment.

During a July 8 virtual Roundtable, corporate impact and philanthropy leaders from across the NationSwell ecosystem gathered to explore how funders can better support their grantees and partners in this moment. The conversation was a candid exploration of what responsible, responsive partnership looks like today, and how funders can show up in ways that strengthen the organizations they rely on to deliver impact. Some of the most salient takeaways from the event appear below:

Key takeaways

Fund collaboration as much as you fund the mission. The appetite for coordinated work has rarely been higher, with more openness to shared ventures than the field has seen in years. Yet the exploration and design of that collaboration too often goes unfunded, leaving good instincts unrealized. Creating deliberate incentives and funding for partnership, shared infrastructure, and collaborative planning is a durable way to strengthen the sector.

Invest in leaders as people. Operational funding keeps organizations running, but the leaders steering them are navigating burnout, isolation, and extraordinary strain. Especially at a time when investments in strategic planning, professional development, and organizational capacity are increasingly viewed as luxuries, funders have an opportunity to treat leader wellbeing and organizational health as essential. 

Narrow the focus without sacrificing relationships. As funders concentrate resources among fewer grantees and organizations return to their core strengths, the discipline of doing fewer things well is proving sustainable. The opportunity is to sharpen strategic focus while remaining intentional about maintaining relationships, exploring partnerships, and ensuring valuable organizations do not become disconnected from the broader ecosystem.

Support creative experimentation. Organizations are innovating faster in response to a rapidly changing operating environment, yet many funders still look for evidence before investing. Creating room for pilots, learning, and responsible experimentation enables nonprofits to generate the evidence funders seek while accelerating new approaches that better meet evolving community needs.

Remove friction and replace it with trust. Waiving unnecessary administrative requirements, simplifying applications and reporting, and continually asking partners what barriers funders can remove frees organizations to focus on their mission instead of bureaucracy. Just as importantly, creating trusted channels for honest feedback allows funders to respond as collaborative partners.

Extend support beyond the grant. Some of the most valuable support lives outside the grant like legal and policy expertise, marketing and communications, and accessible support networks. Funders can also leverage their influence by bringing nonprofit partners into rooms where their voices are heard, their expertise informs decisions, and their networks can grow. These forms of support build capacity that funding alone cannot provide.

Keep convening, and keep listening. In a period of sustained uncertainty, peer networks have become an essential source of perspective, validation, and problem-solving. Regularly bringing partners together and checking in with them between convenings creates opportunities to surface emerging needs and ensure support evolves alongside the realities organizations are facing.

Catalyzing Public Sector Investment and Accountability in Impact Work

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

Private sector capital and impact initiatives can achieve lasting, population-level impact when they connect to public systems, budgets, or policy ownership that sustain and scale the work.

During a June 16 virtual Leader Roundtable, leaders from across the NationSwell ecosystem explored how the private sector can more deliberately catalyze public sector engagement by using corporate and philanthropic initiatives to attract public partners, unlocking government funding, and embedding accountability into public systems over time.

The conversation offered practical approaches for aligning incentives, navigating political and bureaucratic realities, and designing efforts that move from private leadership to durable public stewardship — the most salient takeaways appear below.

Key takeaways:

Lead with listening to understand where public partners see gaps. Rather than arriving with a fixed model to pitch, effective organizations begin by listening and asking government leaders and community partners which challenges they are trying to solve, then work to design solutions that fit the local landscape. This approach strengthens local buy-in and increases the likelihood that initiatives will take hold and scale.

Use data as the common language for cross-sector collaboration. Data is the currency that aligns public, private, and nonprofit partners around shared priorities. By combining local evidence with compelling stories, organizations can help public officials identify systemic barriers, demonstrate return on investment, and build the case for redirecting public resources toward interventions with the greatest long-term impact.

Design for public ownership. The strongest partnerships are intentionally built to transition from privately supported initiatives to publicly sustained systems. Rather than creating programs that rely indefinitely on corporate or philanthropic investment, design models that governments can adopt, fund, and institutionalize through public infrastructure.

De-risk innovation to unlock public investment. Blended funding models can help governments invest with greater confidence by demonstrating measurable results before assuming long-term costs. Whether through philanthropic funding or shared public-private investments, these approaches create a pathway for public systems to absorb and sustain proven solutions.

Build trust and shared ownership that outlast any single organization. Lasting impact relies on cultivating trusted relationships, opening doors to communities, and creating networks that continue learning and collaborating long after an individual organization steps back. Success comes not from maintaining ownership, but from empowering local institutions and networks to carry the work forward.

Leverage each sector’s unique assets. The most effective collaborations bring together complementary strengths rather than relying solely on financial contributions. Organizations contribute technology, operational expertise, talent, data, and convening power alongside investment, while governments provide policy authority, public infrastructure, and pathways to scale. Together, these assets create solutions neither sector could achieve independently.

NationSwell MainStage: Restoring Purpose in America: Common Purpose through Service

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

Across the country, Americans are searching for deeper connection: to one another, to their communities, to a shared sense of purpose. At the same time, trust feels increasingly fragile, social isolation remains widespread, and many people are looking for concrete ways to bridge divides that can often feel too large or too entrenched to overcome.

Service offers one meaningful place to begin. By inviting people to work alongside one another in pursuit of a shared goal, service creates opportunities for connection that are grounded in action, presence, and mutual responsibility. It can help young people cultivate empathy, confidence, and civic-mindedness; help communities build bridges across lines of difference; and help institutions create more durable pathways into leadership, belonging, and public life.

During NationSwell’s MainStage event Restoring Social Connection in America: Common Purpose Through Service and Community Engagement on June 8, 2026, panelists explored how service can function as both a personal and collective pathway — supporting young people as they move between education and career readiness, strengthening mentorship and intergenerational relationships, and helping communities build the infrastructure needed to make connection possible at scale.

Our featured panelists included Secretary Jonny Dorsey, Secretary of the Maryland Department of Service and Civic Innovation, and Senior Advisor to Maryland Governor Wes Moore; Jennifer Hoos Rothberg, Executive Director, Einhorn Collaborative; Aneesh Sohoni, CEO, Teach for America; Ginneh Baugh, Chief Impact Officer, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America; and Greg Weatherford II, Director, The Allstate Foundation and Social Impact.

The conversation offered a hopeful reminder that restoring social connection does not require waiting for perfect conditions — it can begin through small, practical invitations to serve, to mentor, to lead, to listen, and to show up for one another. Some of the key insights from the discussion appear below.

Watch the event in full:

Takeaways:

  • Service can be a threshold experience. Early experiences with service can shift the way young people engage with the world around them, helping them to cultivate empathy, curiosity, and civic-mindedness in ways that ultimately strengthen social cohesion.
  • Service helps young people create career pathways out of purpose. Research shows that today’s young people crave purpose-driven careers and experiences — an opportunity to position service as a meaningful first step toward leadership, human skills, and long-term professional growth.
  • Mentorship is a practical antidote to social isolation. Connection requires presence and mutuality, not credentials or perfection. Mentorship opportunities are a portable, accessible way to help people build trust, feel seen, and cultivate relationships across lines of difference.
  • Youth-led service strengthens communities. Research shows that youth-led service can help meaningfully strengthen career readiness, connection, and resilience, making it both a viable career development strategy and community impact strategy.
  • Government, philanthropy, nonprofits, businesses, and local institutions all have a role to play in making service possible at scale. The Maryland Corps/Service Year Option is just one example of how service can address real public problems, bridge social divides, and connect young people to workforce opportunities.
  • Invite young people into service early, and make the pathway visible. Young people are ready to lead, but adults and institutions have a responsibility to invite them in. Speaking to young people early and often about service as a meaningful pathway to leadership and purpose can create the necessary first conditions for them to take a meaningful leap.

Key Quotes:

“As human beings, we are social animals. We find meaning through connection; we find love in our relationships with each other. Social connection is not a nice-to-have; this is a necessity for individual and collective thriving. The most important moments in your life likely have to do with other human beings who you felt loved by and engaged with.”

— Jennifer Hoos Rothberg, Executive Director, Einhorn Collaborative

“Our current college generation wants purpose-driven careers, and they’re thinking deeply about community. Put yourself in the shoes of an average 22-year-old: it was sometime during elementary school that social media came to be for them, and it was sometime during middle school and high school that they confronted the pandemic. Both have been drivers of social isolation in many ways, and so it’s not surprising that they’re pushing back and rejecting some of the institutions that they feel isolated them. They’re in search of being part of a community.”

— Aneesh Sohoni, CEO, Teach For America

“There is a mutuality to mentorship that really doesn’t happen in any other dynamic. One of the things we say all the time is, ‘You don’t have to be perfect, just present.’ Being able to show up as your true self is one of the things that mentorship allows people to do.”

— Ginneh Baugh, Chief Impact Officer, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America

“One of the things that really stands out from the research is that 82% of young people are already involved in some form of service, especially when you broaden the definition beyond what’s previously been reported and look at everyday acts of kindness young people are doing. We also saw that there were really strong links between youth-led service and career readiness, connection, and resilience. It was important for us to make sure that that got to live itself out.”

— Greg Weatherford II, Director, The Allstate Foundation and Social Impact

“The beauty of service is that you are solving multiple problems at one time. You are creating value in multiple ways at one time.”

— Secretary Jonny Dorsey, Secretary of the Maryland Department of Service and Civic Innovation; Senior Advisor to Governor Wes Moore

Reimagining Workforce Readiness: Why Mental Health and Human Skills Will Define Success in the AI Economy

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

What if the greatest barrier to workforce readiness wasn’t a lack of technical skills, but the absence of systems that help young people adapt in an ever-changing world? As AI continues to reshape industries and traditional career pathways, the future of workforce readiness may depend less on what young people know and more on how effectively they collaborate, communicate, regulate stress, and navigate uncertainty. Emotional intelligence, mental health, and relationship-building are increasingly emerging not only as “soft skills,” but as essential ones.

On June 10, NationSwell convened a group of cross-sector leaders for a virtual roundtable that moved beyond compliance-driven approaches to career readiness, instead examining how relationship-centered environments, identity safety, and well-being practices hold the potential to strengthen resilience, deepen engagement, and improve long-term workforce outcomes. Some of the most salient takeaways from the discussion appear below:

Key takeaways

Invest in early career opportunities as a mental health and workforce strategy. Employment can serve as one of the most effective antidotes for mental health challenges, addressing immediate needs, like a paycheck and a support network, and unlocking long-term potential. Organizations should invest in internships, cross-departmental learning, and other early career opportunities as a means to support young people’s wellbeing and build a stronger workforce pipeline.

Reframe “soft skills” – especially relationship-building – as critical and durable work competencies. As AI takes on more knowledge-based tasks, human connection becomes an increasingly valuable differentiator. Mentorship, peer coaching, cross-functional apprenticeships, and volunteer opportunities can strengthen relationships, improve mental wellbeing, and support workforce development. Participants also emphasized the unique “win-win-win” of employee volunteering and mentoring through nonprofits, which can generate benefits for individuals, communities, and employers altogether.

Embed emotional intelligence across workflows, trainings, and culture. As young people increasingly turn to AI for mental health and career support, they miss opportunities to build socio-emotional skills, like self awareness, social awareness, and relationship management. Organizations can integrate emotional intelligence into everyday work and interactions (especially feedback processes) to strengthen human collaboration, trust, and help-seeking. Dedicated culture roles – such as culture coaches, trauma-informed specialists, and wellness buddies – can then amplify this programming.

Design employee engagement programs that help young people navigate stress, uncertainty, and change. Young people face a number of stressors – from climate anxiety and loneliness to social expectations, relationship violence, and rapid technological change – leaving them feeling overwhelmed and powerless. Leaders emphasized that civic engagement, community participation, and knowledge can help transform this anxiety into agency by giving young people a greater sense of purpose or efficacy over their environment. 

Tailor workforce training to meet educators and managers where they are. Teachers and managers, especially those operating in under-resourced systems, face their own bandwidth constraints and mental health challenges related to AI use and integration. Effective training requires understanding the different realities, priorities, and constraints across sectors, and co-developing tools and resources that range from low-lift, integrable touchpoints to deeper, long-term engagements.

Establish AI guardrails that help young people use AI safely and effectively. With AI regulation, ethical standards, and safeguards still evolving, many young people feel a general anxiety over the technology and many organizations lack clear guardrails for how to best support youth mental health and workforce development. As guardrails standardize, organizations can continue to promote basic AI literacy and responsible, ongoing learning about AI’s impacts and risks. 

Fueling Rural Prosperity on Rural Terms

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

Rural communities are seeing renewed interest from outside capital — data centers, manufacturing sites, energy infrastructure, and more – promising jobs and tax base growth. But these investments often come with tradeoffs: land taken out of agricultural use, heavy demands on water and energy systems, and decisions made far from the people most affected.

Together with leaders from business, philanthropy, and the social sector, participants took part in a conversation on how to invest in rural economic prosperity without stripping local communities of agency, exploring what responsible investment looks like when rural regions are asked to host large-scale infrastructure and enterprise and how models that prioritize local ownership, shared decision-making, and long-term community benefit can compete with extractive approaches.

Some of the most salient takeaways from the conversation appear below:

Key takeaways

  • Center rural communities as engines of innovation, not simply recipients of intervention. Rural regions are already generating meaningful experimentation around AI, workforce development, agriculture, healthcare, and cross-sector collaboration. Effective place-based strategies recognize and amplify the ingenuity already present within communities rather than approaching rural America through a deficit framework.
  • Define success with communities, not for them. Sustainable rural investment requires local residents, institutions, and leaders to shape priorities, define outcomes, and articulate what prosperity actually looks like in their context.
  • Invest in quality-of-life infrastructure as an economic development strategy. Metrics like job growth and GDP rarely capture whether a community feels resilient, hopeful, or connected. Strong schools, childcare systems, healthcare access, elder care, and community institutions are not secondary benefits of growth; they are often the conditions that make growth possible in the first place. Communities that prioritize livability and belonging are better positioned to attract and retain talent over time.
  • Build trust through local leadership and local hiring. Outside organizations move more effectively in rural communities when they work through trusted local relationships and invest in leaders who already understand the community’s culture, history, and priorities. Hiring locally and empowering community-based intermediaries accelerates credibility and deepens long-term impact.
  • Treat limited bandwidth — not lack of creativity — as the core capacity challenge. Many rural communities already possess strong ideas, entrepreneurial energy, and civic commitment, but operate with too few people carrying too many responsibilities. Strategic investments in staffing, technical assistance, and leadership development can unlock local momentum.
  • Fund partnership-building and coordination work, not just programs themselves. Coalition management, relationship-building, convening, and cross-sector alignment are often essential to rural progress, yet are chronically underfunded. Backbone organizations and intermediary partners can play a critical role in expanding local bandwidth and helping communities coordinate around shared goals.
  • Invest in local talent pipelines to create lasting economic resilience. Rural workforce strategies become more durable when communities are able to cultivate talent from within rather than relying exclusively on imported expertise. Leadership development, local service programs, education partnerships, and community-rooted career pathways can help ensure that investment remains embedded locally over time.
  • Develop more granular and community-informed data systems. County-level data often obscures important differences between neighboring communities and can fail to capture local realities altogether. Stronger rural investment strategies require more localized, mixed-method approaches that combine quantitative metrics with qualitative insights gathered directly from residents.
  • Avoid assuming that rural prosperity must look like rapid growth. In many communities, success is defined less by expansion and more by stability, continuity, and preservation.

The 1% Tax Floor and Innovative Approaches to Corporate Impact ROI

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

A new tax reality is changing the economics of corporate philanthropy: companies can now only deduct charitable contributions that exceed 1% of taxable income. That shift is forcing a more explicit conversation inside businesses about the most financially advantageous approaches to philanthropy and how—or whether—those investments generate business value alongside social outcomes.

During a May 19 virtual Leader Roundtable, senior corporate impact and philanthropy leaders from the NationSwell community kicked off a conversation on how companies are reassessing philanthropic budgets, rethinking the balance between grants, in-kind assets, and ordinary business expenses, and sharpening how they define and measure impact ROI. Some of the most salient insights from the discussion appear below:

Key Takeaways:

Collaborate cross-functionally to establish the best organizational approach for navigating the 1% tax floor. To understand the best way for your organization to navigate the 1% tax floor, it is important to align with legal, tax, and government affairs teams early and strategically. Adjustments differ depending on organizational makeup, budget cycles, and legal parameters; bunching or front-loading grants is one mechanism that organizations are considering, but other strategies include shifting the balance between corporate and foundation dollars, reclassifying some philanthropic spend as ordinary business expense, or considering the use of donor-advised funds (DAFs). 

Proactively identify and introduce opportunities for shared value inside of your organization. Social impact leaders should work toward identifying opportunities to center their work around business strategy rather than aligning community programs to a business case retroactively. Programs can be set up for success if they meet the business’s standards for rigor, are grounded in data and collaboration with business leaders, and are communicated in the language of the business. 

Lean on both quantitative and qualitative frameworks to bring a human dimension to measurement discussions. Measuring hours, dollars, and people reached is important, but these metrics alone only tell part of the story. Stories and case studies can be equally important in communicating impact, especially when discussing long-term change. 

Frame social impact initiatives as a talent development and retention driver. Some organizations are partnering with HR and L&D teams to build a more defensible, data-driven people ROI story focused on employee engagement and retention. They are analyzing the relationship between impact programs and talent outcomes – engagement, retention, skill development, and more – using existing survey data or, in some cases, developing new surveys to collect and study primary data.

Invest in human skills development as a business opportunity. With increased AI adoption, the skills that volunteerism and community engagement build — collaboration, empathy, leadership — are becoming more strategically valuable to businesses. Organizations that reframe their impact programs as a vehicle for developing these skills may be better positioned to make credible ROI cases to the business, while also providing value to employees seeking these opportunities.  

Leveraging AI & Technology to Connect More Communities to Quality Healthcare

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

Technology is reshaping healthcare access, but progress is uneven. AI, digital tools, and data platforms have the potential to extend care to underserved communities, address workforce shortages, and improve outcomes. At the same time, gaps in infrastructure, trust, and governance risk widening disparities rather than closing them.

On May 5, NationSwell convened a group of leaders from the healthcare, technology, philanthropy, and the social sectors to unpack how AI and technology can be used to connect more communities to quality care. Together, the group focused on practical strategies for deploying technology responsibly, building partnerships that center community needs, and ensuring that innovation strengthens equity, affordability, and trust in healthcare systems. Some of the most salient takeaways from the discussion appear below:

Key Takeaways:

Ensure that technology empowers community health workers as relationship builders. AI and tech are most valuable when they augment the work of community health workers rather than substitute it. The trusted, relational role that CHWs play in their communities is the irreplaceable foundation of effective care connection. All technology deployed should be designed to protect and extend that capacity.

Design AI tools with CHWs and communities. The most responsible AI adoption in healthcare requires community health workers and the communities they serve to be active participants in tool design. Without mechanisms for feedback, bias mitigation, and accountability, technology risks widening the very health inequities it aims to address.

Prioritize data security and trust as foundational. Organizations working at the intersection of technology and community health must treat data stewardship with the same rigor as the healthcare system itself. Achieving certifications, committing to governance structures, and designing platforms that bring AI into the human loop are essential to maintaining the trust that makes community engagement possible.

Address the full picture of need, not just point-of-care data. Existing data systems often capture only what brings someone into the healthcare system, missing the co-occurring social determinants of health that shape outcomes. Continuous, relationship-based data collection with the support of technology can surface a more complete and actionable picture that enables both better resource connection and effective advocacy.

Invest in AI literacy and critical capacity for the CHW workforce. Community health workers need both the practical skills to use AI tools effectively and the critical frameworks to evaluate how those tools are designed and deployed. Approaches that build competency while also developing CHW voice in governance and advocacy are critical to ensuring that the workforce shaping communities is not left behind as technology advances.

Build toward interoperability and sustainable models. For community-based organizations to achieve lasting impact through technology, they must be able to integrate securely with healthcare payer systems. Achieving interoperability opens pathways to revenue that sustains mission-driven work in ways that philanthropic funding alone cannot.

Shift the question from “can we?” to “should we?” Across sectors, the most important orientation toward AI adoption is not simply capability, but intentionality. Keeping the focus on how technology can better serve CHWs, and continuously asking whether each application advances their interventions, is the compass that keeps this work on the right path.