Category: Event Takeaways

Capital Access Strategies for Building Collective Wealth

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

How can impact leaders help more Americans access the capital they need to buy homes, start businesses, and build lasting wealth?

During an August 25 virtual Leader Roundtable, NationSwell leaders explored promising financial products, lending practices, and tools that can break down longstanding barriers, build financial confidence, and put more wealth-building opportunities within reach.

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

Key takeaways:

Leverage existing business capabilities and capital for impact. Organizations can extend their reach by activating assets they already hold, such as balance sheets, procurement pipelines, and lending capacity, rather than leaning on philanthropy alone. Affordable housing investments, supplier contracting with veteran- and spouse-owned businesses, and the largely untapped potential of donor-advised fund capital sitting on the sidelines all represent ways to put existing infrastructure to work. Treating core business functions as instruments of impact multiplies what any single grant program can achieve.

De-risk capital access through blended structures and partnership. Access to capital often hinges less on the money itself than on who is willing to absorb the risk. Guarantees, second-loss positions, and pooled commitments from partners allow financial institutions to lend further into underserved markets. Diversified capital stacks that layer catalytic philanthropy with government incentives and private investment give every partner more confidence to move forward together.

Innovate credit and risk modeling with trend data. Traditional underwriting frequently rests on outdated snapshots and embedded assumptions that understate creditworthiness. Newer models that weigh trend data and real cash-flow behavior, including approaches tied to account activity rather than conventional credit reporting, offer a more accurate picture of risk. These methods can open capital to borrowers who were previously overlooked.

Remove unnecessary penalties from lending decisions. Many of the rules that compound hardship turn out to be choices rather than requirements. Declining to report loan denials to credit bureaus when the underlying cause, such as a government shutdown, falls entirely outside a borrower’s control is one example of a penalty that can be waived. Reexamining which penalties are mandatory reveals room to expand access without added risk.

Expand pathways to ownership. Capital access is incomplete if it does not translate into ownership. Employee ownership models, entrepreneurship through acquisition of businesses reaching the “silver tsunami” of owner exits, and investment vehicles like baby bonds can turn access into durable, compounding equity. Wealth building takes hold when individuals and communities become owners rather than only surviving financial instability.

Deploy capital as both protection and a path to wealth. Capital delivered at the right moment can prevent harm as readily as it builds assets. No- and low-cost bridge lending during income shocks keeps families from turning to high-cost debt. Positioning capital as a stabilizing force protects the financial foundation people need before wealth building becomes possible.

Recognize guaranteed income as a wealth-building strategy. Direct, unrestricted cash is too often framed as emergency aid rather than a durable driver of prosperity. Evidence links guaranteed income to family stabilization, stronger health outcomes, and choices like a career change that compound into long-term, multigenerational gains more accessible. Stabilizing a family is frequently the precondition for any future-oriented wealth building to take root.

Consolidate fragmented aid into flexible, dignified cash. Families navigating a patchwork of one-off, direct-service programs face slow reimbursements and administrative friction when timing matters most. Unrestricted cash lets people direct resources to their own most pressing need, whether housing, transportation, or an infant’s first-year costs, and has proven cheaper and faster to administer than standing up separate programs. Trusting people to allocate their own funds delivers both better outcomes and lower cost.

Measuring Place-Based Impact

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

By its very nature, place-based work is bespoke to the specific community it is focused on, with their specific history, environment, cultural identity, industries and skills, opportunities and challenges, and leaders driving the work. With that level of customization, are there standards and best practices we can adhere to in how funders and partners measure the impact of this work? Or are place-based initiatives fundamentally at odds with a consistent measurement approach?

During this NationSwell leader roundtable, a group of place-based funders and practitioners explored the topic of what it takes to successfully measure place-based work, and whether there are universal principles worth adapting to each unique context.

Some of the most salient takeaways shared during the discussion appear below:

Key takeaways

Pair a shared North Star with locally chosen indicators. A small set of consistent, long-term outcomes can give partners a common, motivating destination, while contributing indicators can reflect the conditions and strategies that matter most in each community. Layering those measures with rapid-cycle input and output data allows organizations to pursue population-level change while learning and adapting in real time.

Measure whether people and communities are ultimately better off, not simply whether a program produced its intended output. Jobs created, people trained, businesses supported, and properties revitalized matter, but they do not capture the full value (or potential unintended consequences) of place-based work. A higher-paying job can still leave a worker worse off if it triggers the loss of healthcare, housing, childcare, or other benefits. Measures like social return on investment, civic participation, community identity, and residents’ sense of agency can provide a fuller picture of whether an initiative is strengthening both individual well-being and a community’s capacity to sustain its own renewal.

Treat community engagement as an essential source of measurement and strategy. Residents should be active participants in helping to determine what success looks like and which conditions require intervention. Compensating them for their time, providing childcare support, creating recurring opportunities for input, and reporting back on what changed can turn local knowledge into indicators, investments, and program decisions. The test of authentic engagement is not whether residents were consulted, but whether institutions used their authority and resources to act on what they heard.

Use data to uncover the systems beneath an outcome. The presenting problem may not sit within the system responsible for addressing it: chronic absenteeism can be driven by eviction and housing instability, while workforce retention can depend on childcare, transportation, or the abrupt loss of public benefits. Data should function as a learning tool, not simply as evidence that an existing strategy is working.

Build one coherent theory of change before translating the work for funders. Place-based organizations often face overlapping, and sometimes conflicting, reporting requirements from public, philanthropic, and corporate partners. A clear, sequential model can demonstrate how workforce development, business creation, physical revitalization, and other interventions reinforce one another, allowing organizations to map funder-specific metrics onto a consistent framework rather than maintaining a new measurement system for every grant. When the relationships among interventions are made legible, a theory of change can do more than satisfy funders: it can build the case for changing what they are willing to support.

Scale place-based work by transferring capacity without reproducing control. Leaders can distinguish among places where they possess the relationships and expertise to work directly, places where local partners can adapt the model with funding and technical assistance, and places where broader dissemination is most appropriate. The local owner may be a municipality, cooperative, tribal government, public authority, business, or nonprofit. Scale succeeds when the model can travel while strategy, authority, and ownership remain rooted in place.

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.