Resource Type: Commentary

Influence at Work, Part 3: Showcasing impact’s ROI

Posted on by Nick Cericola

Influence at Work is a 3-part series of articles exploring what it takes for impact executives to gain and use internal influence – that precious currency required to be successful in any organization. Part 3 concludes with how demonstrating ROI can compound influence over time.

In parts 1 and 2 of Influence at Work, I focused on the value unlocked by impact leaders when they reflect business characteristics in how they think and operate. That will get folks quite far in building up a supply of professional capital — i.e., influence — but there’s a third and final leg of the stool that needs as much attention: proving what you’re doing is working.

To wit, your influence is compounded over time if you can show — and sell — ROI to the business.

Here’s what that requires in practice:

Beef up your analytics capabilities

I touched on the importance of building a team around business-relevant skills in part 2, but it’s worth a double click on analytics. Here I’m talking about the ability to design studies, interrogate data, and make airtight claims about the value your work is creating for the business.

Many impact teams weren’t built with this skill in the foreground – program evaluation and impact reporting, yes, but not internal ROI analytics. If your team doesn’t have this capability today, your two paths are to hire for it or borrow it. Both are viable.

Tactics to consider:

  • Audit your current team’s analytical skills. Where are the gaps? Can existing team members develop them through training?
  • When you have open roles, write job descriptions that explicitly require quantitative or analytical competencies. Former finance, strategy, or data professionals who’ve moved into impact roles can be effective at translating between the two worlds.
  • When hiring isn’t feasible, borrow. Identify a data or analytics partner inside the business – someone in people analytics, finance, market research, or a business intelligence function – who can serve as a collaborator on your internal ROI work. Position the ask as a mutual benefit: good measurement of impact programs yields proof points that the business itself can use.
  • Consider the role of external validators. Third-party evaluation can introduce credibility that internal analysis alone can’t fully provide. Build a relationship with an academic partner, a research organization, or an evaluation firm that can bring an independent perspective to your data.

Commit to the structured study of primary ROI data 

Honestly, measuring the true business ROI of impact work is really tough. That’s why so many for so long have looked to the big secondary studies from research firms or consultancies to back up their claims that employee volunteerism generally improves retention, or that consumers are generally willing to pay a price premium for sustainable products, and so on. To be clear, these studies are great, and they’re worth citing. But they’re not really a replacement for knowing your own specific ROI.

As shared value approaches to impact take deeper root – and as impact teams look for ways to ensure their continued relevancy – they need to focus on primary data collection, good question design, and structured analyses that survive scrutiny.

Tactics to consider:

  • Develop a testable hypothesis. Start by identifying the specific business priority you’re trying to demonstrate impact against: employee retention, consumer trust, market access, etc. Then build a logic model that works backward to the core underlying impact work (e.g., by doing X, we accomplish Y, which is worth Z to the business).
  • Seek out your sources of primary data. Deputize someone on your team to figure out what data exists, how it is captured, who owns it, and what opportunities are available to study it for impact purposes. Chances are decently good that employee engagement scores, talent retention data, and customer research are within reach for your team already.
  • Analyze the data to test your hypothesis. Generally you’re going to be exploring the correlation or causal relationship between business outcomes (e.g., annual talent retention rates) and impact inputs (e.g., employee volunteer participation).
  • Know the limits of your claims. There are four degrees by which you can measure and articulate business value, in ascending order of their strength: program outputs, correlated outcomes, causal outcomes, and financial value. All four degrees have merit, but only when framed appropriately. Your audience will know when correlation is not causation, so be transparent about what your analysis can and can’t prove.
  • Document your methodology. You may not always need to “show your work” with every audience, report, or presentation, but you’ll never regret documenting your approach and your math when it’s called for.

Care deeply about your deck and how you deliver it

As much as we all hope for our numbers to speak for themselves, that’s a gamble most shouldn’t take. At the end of the day, selling ROI – making your case for attention, investment, and prioritization – is just as essential as measuring it. I recently spoke with a couple of long-serving corporate impact executives who told me that the presentation deck as a craft deserves outsized attention: the narrative arc, the visual clarity, the economy and precision of language. 

Tactics to consider:

  • Lead with business implications and avoid the temptation to describe everything you do programmatically.
  • Design a deck to be voiced over rather than read in depth. We often ask slides to do too much – to be the backdrop of our presentations and the detailed readout all at once. In some cases, you need two different documents to perform those two different tasks. Keep slides lean if you can – one main idea conveyed per slide, minimal text, strong visual hierarchy of information. And if needed, use an appendix for detail.
  • Tailor your framing to the specific executive or audience. A CFO cares about financial exposure and return. A CHRO cares about talent outcomes. A CMO cares about brand and consumer trust. The underlying story can be consistent but the framing should accommodate their unique perspective. 
  • Practice delivering it out loud. Your goal is not to memorize, but to build fluency – to be able to move fluidly between the deck and the room, respond to questions while staying on message, and project confidence.
  • Develop a ‘30-second version’ of every presentation you give. You may not always need it, but when you do you’ll be glad to have put in the extra work. If nothing else, it forces you to clarify your thinking to its purest form.

Don’t shy away from clarifying the stakes

Impact leaders might hesitate to connect their work explicitly to business risk or competitive exposure out of concern they’d seem alarmist, or that they’d imply their function exists primarily to manage downside. That caution may be misplaced, particularly in a moment where any number of dynamics – from a swinging political pendulum to growing AI backlash – could put impact in a difference-making position for the company.

Leaders are often well-served to call it how they see it and, in the right conditions, will benefit from sharper articulation of what the company stands to gain or lose based on its level of commitment to social goals. One impact leader recently relayed an anecdote that underscores this point: she went into a meeting with c-level execs and asked, “how would you feel if we were no longer seen as an industry leader on [our priority]?” The question, pointed and provocative, piqued attention in the right ways and accelerated a conversation about putting more resources into the work.

Tactics to consider:

  • Frame impact gaps as potential business risks. Urgency rooted in competitive exposure and reputational risk often lands most squarely with business leaders. In particular, if your company is materially behind peers on a workforce, community, or consumer trust dimension, say so using competitive data. 
  • Connect ROI to investment decisions explicitly. When making the case for new resources or program continuation, be clear about what the business stands to gain and what it risks by not investing. Sometimes a well-framed cost of inaction argument is more persuasive than a benefit projection.
  • Scenario plan with your team. Look down the road at potential short and mid-range shifts in your company’s context that could change the relative value of impact to the business, and discuss how you can put your work in an optimal position ahead of those eventualities. Relevant shifts could relate to your industry, the political environment, consumer or public sentiment, and other dynamics. 

That’s a wrap on Influence at Work (revisit part 1 and part 2), but not on NationSwell’s investment in supporting leaders in our community with this most essential aspect of their success. Many thanks for the brilliant NationSwell members and Strategic Advisors who lent me their experience and insights for this mini-series. For anyone with questions, comments, or need, please shoot me an email at [email protected]. 

Influence at Work, Part 2: Becoming an Asset to the Business

Posted on by Nick Cericola

Influence at Work is a 3-part series of articles exploring what it takes for impact executives to gain and use internal influence – that precious currency required to be successful in any organization. Part 1 below begins with the foundation: earning your license to operate.

In Part 1 of this mini-series I wrote about earning your license to operate as a corporate impact leader — developing the business fluency and relationships that establish your credibility inside your organization. For Part 2, I explore what to do with that license once you have it. 

When I talk to folks doing this work at a high level for a long time, they tell me that influential corporate impact executives operate in equal measure as leaders of an impact strategy and agents of the business’s core strategy. Quite simply, they demonstrate the same core operational capabilities and strategic instincts as their peers in other departments. 

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Pursue impact solutions that solve business problems

Durable and effective impact programs often address a business need in addition to advancing a societal objective. In doing so, they rewire others’ perception of impact’s relevancy (less “cost center”; more “strategic resource” and “business driver”). We all know this as shared value.

Maybe your company has workforce pipeline challenges, or limited credibility in growth markets, or consumer trust deficits, or regulatory exposure – each of these can be a legitimate entry point for impact work that drives a blend of social and business outcomes.

Tactics to consider:

  • Revisit your current program portfolio through the lens of your “pressure map” from Part 1. For each program, ask: does this address a business priority? If not, it may warrant scrutiny.
  • When developing new initiatives or refreshing your impact strategy, start with the business. What are the 5-year goals the business cares most about? Then, crosswalk those priorities to the assets and levers available to your impact function. For exercise and tools to guide this kind of thinking, check out NationSwell’s Toolkit on Identifying Your Organizational Impact Superpowers or reach out to your NationSwell Impact Team to explore ways we can support.
  • Partner with a senior business leader or function (e.g. HR, marketing) who has accountability for the business priority you’re targeting. Shared ownership can increase your relevance, resourcing, and the likelihood that you land the plane. 
  • Consider if a pilot would benefit your shared value approach. Testing new solutions in targeted markets or functions could help to validate both social and business outcomes, and the results can be used to refine the model before committing with full force. 

Run your function like a business

Leading your programs, your budget, and your team with the same rigor and standards as other business leaders tells the rest of the organization that you’re one of them.

This requires managing your programs to high performance expectations, being ready to make hard calls, and treating your function’s resources with the same discipline you’d expect from any other part of the enterprise. It also requires proactivity about accountability. One corporate impact executive advised, “Be the first to admit when something is not working.”

Tactics to consider:

  • Establish a regular business review rhythm for your programs that mirrors how other functions report on performance. Specifically, consider:
    • Reporting on outcomes, cost per outcome, and contribution to business priorities;
    • Aligning cadence with existing forums (e.g. quarterly business reviews instead of standalone meetings);
    • Using the same formats as other business functions (e.g. dashboards, decks, etc.).
  • If resources permit, dedicate someone on your team to operate as an independent evaluator to apply a standardized measurement framework across all programs. By moving evaluation responsibilities away from the program team you decrease the risk of bias and increase the uniformity by which you understand what’s working and what’s not.
  • Make the hard calls. Define criteria for continuation, scaling, or exit at the outset – such as minimum impact (social and business) thresholds. Reassess on a fixed timeline that aligns with other business functions. If a program is misaligned, underperforming, or consuming resources without a clear return, have an exit strategy. 

Be judicious about your external partnerships

Partners chosen for legacy reasons, personal relationships, or anything other than strategic fit can subtly undermine leaders’ credibility over time, especially when resources start to get squeezed. Evaluate partners’ impact regularly and maintain a standard of mutual value creation — not unlike how another operator in your business might approach vendor relationships.


To be clear, trust is still the most crucial currency when working with partners. The leaders I’ve talked to value knowing what their partners excel at and letting them do their thing. At the same time, those leaders caution against becoming overcommitted to any given partner, to being a sole source of grant revenue to a program, or otherwise making an eventual exit too disruptive for either organization.

Tactics to consider:

  • Audit your current partner portfolio annually against your strategic priorities. Where is the fit strong? Where is it rooted in legacy? Where are you filling a gap a better-aligned partner could fill?
  • Assess partner reputation and ecosystem positioning. Evaluate how current and prospective partners may be perceived by key stakeholders, and how that perception reflects on the internal influence you are honing. Prioritize partners whose credibility, leadership, and approach reinforce your strategic narrative and brand, and establish clear criteria for reputational risk. Consider third-party validation and a clear track record of impact.
  • Select organizations that have opportunities for employees, leaders, or customers to engage — through volunteerism, pro bono work, etc. — so partnerships don’t operate in isolation from the business. 
  • Develop a point of view on what percentage of an organization or program budget you’re willing to be responsible for and apply that information to grantmaking decisions and partner evaluations.
  • Build a playbook for winding down grantee or partner relationships. Include considerations like what period of notice to give before discontinuing grants, whether to provide reduced funding for a temporary bridge period, and ways to help build your partners’ capacity to seek additional funding sources.

Build your team around business-relevant skills

Working in the impact profession draws in people who are intrinsically motivated by mission or purpose. But hiring for purpose — building a team around passion – isn’t sufficient in a business environment. Here’s another point where the NationSwell members and Strategic Advisors I’ve been talking with are quite clear: the most effective corporate impact teams put a premium on analytical, financial, program management, and communication capabilities. They hire people who understand — often come from — complex corporate environments. That doesn’t mean domain expertise, field work, and lived experience count less; just that they should be considered alongside business acumen.

Tactics to consider:

  • Create deliberate development pathways for your current team. Consider secondments or internal rotations into other functions, and offer training on business-relevant skills. Bring in cross-functional partners to present their work to your team.
  • When you have open roles, write job descriptions that center business competencies alongside the domain expertise you’d typically prioritize.
  • Work with your talent partners to source job candidates from within the business. Former finance, strategy, or operations professionals who’ve moved into impact roles can be quite successful at translating impact to the business and vice versa.

Explore sustainable and diversified funding models

There are a few reasons why it pays to think creatively about the financial architecture of your work. For starters, it’s rarely a bad idea to reduce dependencies on a single source of funding. Then there’s the possibility of being able to do more with more. And perhaps most relevant to this topic, there’s the opportunity to demonstrate a mutually beneficial orientation to the business’s financial interests.

What this looks like in practice can vary, and what’s right for one company might not work for another. Some companies make impact investments that regenerate capital while advancing strategically aligned goals. Some corporate foundations raise money from customers and external partners. And in the context of OBBBA, some impact leaders are collaborating with partners in finance, accounting, and elsewhere to maximize tax advantages for philanthropy while preserving its key role in advancing impact. 

Tactics to consider:

  • Review NationSwell’s recent case study on navigating OBBBA and then connect with your finance partners to explore creative ways to mitigate tax downsides while maintaining philanthropic momentum.
  • Check out NationSwell’s guide to corporate impact investing to see if there’s a potential role for this approach in your organization.
  • Investigate opportunities to co-fund programs with other business units or functions that have a direct stake in the outcome. For inspiration, take a look at NationSwell’s case study of Johnson & Johnson’s Business Match Fund.

If earning your license to operate is about closing the distance between how you think and how the business thinks, then becoming an asset is about closing the distance between what you do and what the business needs done. When that gap is narrow — when your strategy, your programs, your team, and your partnerships are all in service of business priorities as much as impact goals — your influence starts becoming hardwired. And that’s a good place to be.

In Part 3 of Influence at Work, we’ll turn to the matter of ROI: how to measure it and how to talk about it.

NationSwell op-ed: Predicting the Future of Work

Posted on Jacob Lepiarz and Allie Mahler

We are currently living through one of the most profound shifts in the history of work. As AI, automation, and other emerging technologies redefine jobs, skills, and career pathways wholesale, leaders across sectors are being called to meet these industry-wide undulations head-on and help shape what comes next.

That imperative is at the heart of NationSwell’s new Workforce Innovation Collaborative — a cross-sector effort designed to help leaders explore emerging workforce trends and co-design scalable solutions for a more future-ready and inclusive economy. Through shared learning, strategic dialogue, and collective action, the Collaborative aims to create the kind of trusted space leaders need to navigate uncertainty and create a future-ready workforce where every person has the skills, opportunities, and support to succeed.

To mark the launch of that work, NationSwell invited leaders from the Collaborative to respond to a shared prompt:

Which emerging signals are giving you the most optimism about the future of work right now? And where do you currently see the greatest opportunity to build a system that is more responsive to where work is headed next?

Although their responses reflect different vantage points, they converge around the common belief that the future of work will be shaped by how well leaders connect learning to real opportunity, pair innovation with inclusion, and design workforce systems that can adapt as quickly as the world around them changes.

Prompt: Which emerging signals are giving you the most optimism about the future of work right now? Where do you currently see the greatest opportunity to build a workforce system that is more responsive to where work is headed next?

“We are at an inflection point in the future of work, and I believe the greatest source of optimism and opportunity is in mastering the art and science of building truly responsive workforce systems.

The science is the strategic leveraging of predictive labor market intelligence. By shifting away from reactive measures, we can now leverage data and insights to anticipate skill demands driven by global trends. Our data provides the scientific rigor needed to pinpoint future talent shortages, standardize risk indicators, and replace guesswork with reliable, real-time insights, allowing us to accelerate our workforce investments across the globe.

However, the true opportunity — the art — lies in translating those insights and data into hyper-local execution that allows us to co-create with the communities we work in. This essential human-centered approach ensures our work doesn’t just fill a business gap, but actively builds equitable, transparent systems that deliver a net-positive impact in local communities. We achieve this by cultivating bespoke, long-term partnerships with community leaders, educational institutions, and nonprofits. 

Linking our global data-driven approach to local trust and co-creation is the systemic approach necessary to ensure our interventions foster equity and accessibility, building the sustainable, resilient workforce the future demands.”

— Courtney Williams, Global Workforce Development & Labor Market Intelligence, Google

“Across the Design and Make industries, I’m seeing promising workforce solutions that connect access, applied skills, and real hiring pathways. It’s no longer enough to train people on tools in isolation — what’s emerging now are integrated models that build capability in real workflows, validate those skills through industry recognized credentials, and link learners directly to opportunity. That’s how we ensure both students and experienced professionals can adapt and thrive as technology reshapes the future of work.”

— Kate Buchanan, Workforce Innovation & Investment Lead, Autodesk Foundation

“Right now, what gives me the most optimism about the future of work is the growing consensus that, as AI reshapes roles, human-centric skills — critical thinking, communication, and creativity — matter more, not less. It’s really important that optimism is matched with action in this moment, and through Barclays LifeSkills, our programs are helping people to develop these skills in order to differentiate themselves for current and future roles.

As we look at the workforce development sector, the greatest opportunity is to build a system that keeps pace with change by connecting learning to work earlier and more often, and by updating training as employer needs evolve faster. That means scaling employer-aligned earn-and-learn pathways — apprenticeships, fellowships, internships and project-based work — so learners graduate with an increased level of experience. It also means widening access to growth sectors, including AI-enabled roles and the skilled trades, where we continue to see strong demand. Through Barclays LifeSkills, we’re working across our partnerships to turn demand into clear routes to good jobs.”

— Deborah Goldfarb, Global Head of Citizenship, Barclays

“What gives me optimism is how clearly manufacturing and industrial skills are being redefined as both high-tech and people-driven. Advances in automation, digital tools and connected systems are changing work on the factory floor and at job sites. Realizing the full value of those advances depends on sustained investment in our people through skills-building, learning and clear career pathways. I’m also encouraged by how employers are engaging more intentionally with collaborators beyond their organizations. We’re witnessing stronger coordination among educators, workforce systems and local communities to ensure training keeps pace with technological advancement. This alignment — of innovation, skills and purpose — is a compelling signal that manufacturing can provide meaningful, fulfilling careers in a dynamic industry.

One of the greatest opportunities lies in modernizing workforce systems to evolve alongside the technologies shaping manufacturing. High schools, community colleges and regional training providers are critical anchors in this system, and we need to align more closely and dynamically with them, given that roles and skill requirements are changing faster than traditional training cycles can keep pace.

That means co‑designing training pathways that blend hands‑on experience with digital and technology‑enabled learning. It also means creating opportunities for continuous upskilling throughout a career. When workforce systems are built to adapt — rather than react — they not only prepare people for today’s manufacturing roles, but also for the future. They also help ensure the industry can remain innovative, competitive, and resilient over the long term.”

— Asha Varghese, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility, Caterpillar Inc. and President of the Caterpillar Foundation

“We are seeing a historic surge in systems readiness work at the local, state, and national levels. Stakeholders in the workforce ecosystem sometimes work in silos, but I’m seeing sustained interest in collaboration, especially across sectors. We are collectively examining what worked in the past to determine what must evolve for the future. 

There’s also growing consensus that career journeys of the future will be less linear. We know upskilling isn’t one-dimensional. It might mean deepening expertise to grow within an existing career trajectory, diversifying skills to transition into an adjacent role, or pivoting into an entirely new profession. A big opportunity right now is to reimagine our support systems to recognize this full spectrum of movement, ensuring that our infrastructure is as flexible as the workers it serves.”

— Diana Fischer, Senior Director, Workday Foundation

“One of the greatest opportunities is in building accelerated, more flexible pathways into the skilled trades that are tightly connected with employer needs. A more responsive workforce system should focus on expanding apprenticeships, investing in short-term training, and exposing students earlier to these fulfilling and well-paying careers.”

— Betsy Conway, Executive Director, Lowe’s Foundation

Influence at Work, Part 1: Earning the License to Operate

Posted on by Nick Cericola

Influence at Work is a 3-part series of articles exploring what it takes for impact executives to gain and use internal influence – that precious currency required to be successful in any organization. Part 1 below begins with the foundation: earning your license to operate.

The impact leader’s work of building influence begins with establishing one’s own credibility as a business leader. More accurately, it begins with conceiving of oneself as a business leader. I have been struck in my recent conversations with seasoned impact executives by how emphatic they are in this regard. They told me there is no escaping that sense of sisyphean effort required to make the case – to get to “yes” – if your own mental model is one that differs widely from that of the CFO, COO, or any other executive who sees themself as primarily an agent of the enterprise. 

Put simply, they told me you advance impact by working through the business, not alongside it. 

For some leaders, this invites a shift: impact leaders should be able to think like and channel the perspective, language, and outlook of the very people they seek to influence.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Study how the business makes money

If you can’t clearly explain how your company does what it does, you’re operating at a disadvantage. By really learning how the cash flows, how share price behaves, how the widgets get made, you not only understand what makes your own impact work possible, you understand how to decode the business’s strategy and the psychology behind its decision-making. You begin to frame impact and talk about it in language that will resonate most strongly and signal that your efforts are aligned to the business.

Tactics to consider:

  • Join company earnings calls and/or pull the transcript and pay particular attention to the CEO and CFO remarks in full. Note the exact language they use to describe priorities, risks, and performance. Start using that language in your own communications.
  • Ask your finance business partner for a 30-minute sync for you and your team to go deeper on what’s new and evolving with your business model, priorities, and financial underpinnings.

Build relationships with five essential collaborators and orient yourself to the problems they are trying to solve

Whether you’re remote or fully onsite, step outside of your vertical and “walk the halls” in your finance, product, strategy, marcomm, and talent orgs. Time spent building relationships – accruing social capital – with leaders in these departments is time spent as well as anywhere. 

Prioritize curiosity about their sources of pressure and business anxiety. What are they trying to build or solve? What keeps them up at night? What defines their own success or failure? If they understand you as invested in their success – sharing in their challenges – they’ll likely be much stronger partners to you. You’ll learn how they talk, how they think, and how they see the business, allowing you to adopt or mirror those characteristics in the future when you need their partnership.

Tactics to consider:

  • Schedule informal 1:1s with a peer-level leader in each of the five functions and come with questions like “What’s the problem you’re most focused on solving right now?” and “How do you think about success in your role over the next 12-18 months?”
  • Identify one recurring meeting in each of those functions you could observe or contribute to. Even occasional visibility builds familiarity.
  • Find a low-stakes way to add value to one of their priorities before you ever ask for something. A relevant article, an introduction, a data point they’d find useful.
  • Create a simple “pressure map” to track what each key internal partner is being measured on, what’s keeping them up at night, and where they’re under scrutiny. Update it after every substantive conversation.
  • When a new initiative or challenge surfaces in the business, ask yourself: is there an impact angle here that serves their need? before you ask whether it serves yours.

Adopt the same information diet as your execs 

To connect your work to that of your CEO and those around them, you’ve got to make sense of the world as they do. While you may not know exactly what your chief executive spends their time reading, it’s a decent assumption that they’re scanning general business coverage (WSJ, Bloomberg, Fortune, NYT) and industry / trade press on a daily basis. Personally, I find WSJ’s CEO Brief, Fortune’s CEO Daily, and NYT’s Dealbook to be excellent choices for daily news and commentary relevant to markets and business.

Tactics to consider:

  • Add two or three of the recommended newsletters to your morning routine and spend 10 minutes with them before you open Slack or email.
  • When you read something particularly relevant to your company or industry, get in the habit of forwarding it to a peer or senior leader with a one-line observation. It’s a light-touch way to demonstrate business awareness and stay top of mind.
  • Once a quarter, review your own content consumption and consider adding another business-focused content source into your content diet. 

Track your company relative to peers and competitors

Business leaders are keenly aware of their market position relative to competitors. With social impact, they tend not to want to be laggards. The more you can stay attuned to the pressures – direct or indirect – being placed on the business by its peers the more likely you are to be able to win attention when you identify a competitor gap or opportunity space for impact purposes.

Tactics to consider:

  • Set up Google Alerts for your top three to five competitors with keywords tied to relevant topics like social impact, community investment, and workforce. This takes ten minutes and surfaces competitive intelligence passively.
  • Before any major internal pitch or planning conversation, do a quick scan of what peer companies have announced or been recognized for recently. Knowing where your company sits — ahead, behind, or alongside — gives you a sharper edge in those conversations.
  • Ask your NationSwell Impact Team about doing a competitor or peer scan for you.

Increasingly, part of earning your license to operate as an impact leader is about closing the distance between how you think and how the business thinks. When that gap is wide, your influence is built on the basis of successful advocacy. When that gap is narrow, your influence is built on the basis of a strong business orientation and business discipline. More on that latter piece when I share Part 2 of Influence at Work: “Becoming an Asset to the Business.”

NationSwell’s Look Ahead at 2026

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

From shifting economic conditions to evolving expectations of leadership, 2026 will test how organizations adapt and lead. To ground these dynamics in real-world experience, we invited NationSwell members and Senior Advisors to offer their thoughts, predictions, and recommendations on the year ahead. Together, their insights surface some of the early signals and inflection points that will help impact leaders anticipate what’s coming and prepare accordingly.

Take a look at some of their predictions for 2026 below:

On the national and global shifts that will shape social impact work:

“With the collapse of international development budgets, we’ve shifted from a world with ‘more money than innovation’ to a world with “more innovation than money.” While multilateral agencies continue to grapple with existential funding crises, entrepreneurs on the ground have been solving problems faster, cheaper, more sustainably — and yes, at scale. The future of global development is already happening in the hands of entrepreneurs who didn’t wait for permission to build solutions. In 2026, we will double down investing in them.”

— Hala Hanna, Executive Director, MIT Solve

“The adjustments to the social safety net will reveal the start of new support and assistance mechanisms.”

— John Brothers, President and CEO, Charles and Margery Barancik Foundation; NationSwell Strategic Advisor

“Competitive health organizations will build new, real-world datasets—moving past secondary data to focus on primary data—to execute AI strategies. A major pillar is atomic care data between the caregiver and care recipient—the “last three feet of care.” Breakthroughs like this will begin to unlock a $6 trillion North American care economy, transforming health care, jobs, and the global economy.”

— Richard Lui, Director, Oscar-qualifying Caregiving Films; Principal, CAREGenome; Anchor, CNN & NBCU News

On the ethics and strategies needed to implement AI at scale:

“As one colleague put it, ‘other large economies are building infrastructure in AI for education, we’re building gardens.’ It’s time to get serious and focus on creating the policy to practice infrastructure when it comes to designing for a new era.

—Jean-Claude Brizard, President and CEO, Digital Promise Global

“AI is valuable to a point; but it lacks nuance. Scratch the surface and it starts to feel like the emperor’s new clothes. We’ve worshiped at that altar long enough, and now we’ll start to see a switch back (at least in media) where the premium value lies with the journalist herself. Facts are facts (if only we could agree on them) but analysis and commentary are hard. (As an example, I don’t need a journalist to tell me where the markets closed; but I do need a journalist to tell me why they closed where they did.) In the media, watch for an emphasis on the real—real dialog between real people, stories written by real journalists, art created by real artists, original photographs by actual photographers. The human touch (that seemingly still can’t be replicated by a bot), might just be the premium that makes us pay.

— Francesca Donner, founder & editor-in-chief, The Persistent

On the deep value in supporting and lifting up young people:

“In 2026, youth inclusion in the development of emerging technologies like AI, especially girls, nonbinary individuals, and historically underrepresented youth, will be critical to innovation in tech. Organizations that recognize this trend and move beyond superficial engagement to genuinely give young people a voice and opportunities in tech development, strategy, and design will be leaders. Collaborating with organizations such as Girls Who Code to involve the next generation as essential collaborators will help companies achieve real, equitable impact.”

— Tarika Barrett, Chief Executive Officer, Girls Who Code

“2026 will be a year for youth—for their voices and their leadership. As we look for new and different approaches to address the many issues we see across the country and around the world, the fresh perspectives of youth (long seen as naïve and idealistic) will emerge as both viable and essential, as young people assume more roles of leadership in business, government, and society. And we need to show up to support them.”

— George Tsiatis, CEO and Co-Founder, Resolution Project

On the continued importance of social connection and fidelity to community:

“In 2026, let’s stop dabbling and start scaling what actually works—then drop what doesn’t. Team up in bigger, braver ways with the people closest to the problems, not just the usual suspects. Pick a lane, put real money and energy behind it, and move now like this decade can’t wait.”

— Celeste Warren, Founder, Celeste Warren Consulting, LLC; NationSwell Strategic Advisor

“Opportunities that allow for community, collaboration and connection will be increasingly important. People want to co-create change and not just support it from the sidelines. This will lead to more collaborative funding models that use a mix of time, talent and money.”

— Beth Bengston, CEO and Founder, Working for Women

“As the world races toward the mass adoption of AI, people are increasingly turning to bots and machines for advice, counsel, and even companionship. But we have to ask ourselves, at what cost? This shift, while ‘efficient,’ risks eroding the very essence of human connection and the agency we have over the choices we make, the work we do, and the world we live in.”

— Kim Dabbs, Founder, To Belonging; NationSwell Strategic Advisor

“In 2026, the social impact field will be defined by how well we serve communities that continually transition and adapt, like military families. The organizations that succeed will invest in flexible, tech-enabled, community-led support that meets people where they are and scales belonging through trusted local networks.”

— Kathy Roth-Douquet, CEO and Board President, Blue Star Families

On the need to create balance and alignment amid tensions:

“As we look ahead, 2026 may be remembered as a year when situational stewardship quietly took shape across the social impact field. With many systems operating under assumptions that no longer fully hold, people are adjusting how they respond — prioritizing judgment, timing, and care. In that context, situational stewardship itself may be among the most generative conditions for meaningful impact, and offering grace in how we understand each other’s choices allows that work to be seen and sustained.”

— Dawn Karber, Executive Director, SkillsFWD at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors

“Social impact organizations must clearly tie mission outcomes to core business value to remain relevant, continue funding, and have influence. In other words, ‘good intentions’ will no longer be enough. The field is moving decisively toward value-creation first.”

— Maggie Carter, NationSwell Strategic Advisor

“2025 marked a year of great tension. We saw companies act more cautiously, despite impact leaders wanting to see companies be more courageous. In 2026, we expect to see a different tension arise. One where companies invest further in employee volunteering while nonprofits’ financial needs grow. This will demand that the two sides of the ecosystem come together to find paths to mutuality, especially as the UN marks 2026 as the International Year of the Volunteer.”

— Sona Khosla, Chief Impact Officer, Benevity

“During this year of corporate sustainability resets and uncertainty, focus on renewing your commercial relationships and business case. Use this ‘pause’ to make your plan to retake the offensive once this firefighting period is over.”

— Michael Kobori, NationSwell Strategic Advisor

And finally, the simple advice that will sustain us in difficult moments:

“Always hope. And move like you are not afraid.”

— Alesha Washington, President and CEO, Seattle Foundation

Welcoming New Advisors to NationSwell’s Strategic Advisory Team

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

Driven by our steadfast commitment to advancing bold, effective leadership across the impact sector, NationSwell continues to deepen the ways we serve our community, expanding the insights, expertise, and strategic guidance available to help members lead with clarity and drive meaningful change. That’s why we’re thrilled to welcome three exceptional leaders to our Strategic Advisory team: Kim Dabbs, Shannon Schuyler, and Celeste Warren (pictured left to right).

They join a distinguished group of NationSwell Strategic Advisors who bring real-world experience to the challenges and opportunities facing today’s impact leaders. Together, this group supports our members across some of the most strategic and exemplary work and needs in the sector, including building resilient organizational cultures, embedding impact into business strategy, the practice of impact leadership in organizations, architecting strategies that are differentiated and built to last, and leading on issues ranging from workforce innovation to diversity and inclusion to corporate responsibility.

Kim, Shannon, and Celeste bring deep expertise and a proven track record of leading transformational change across sectors. They will support our members in a variety of ways, including one-on-one consultations, roundtable conversations, and tailored guidance. Through these engagements, they will offer new opportunities to advance impact, strengthen strategy, navigate complexity, and accelerate our members’ most important work. Their involvement will help deepen the value of membership and expand what is possible for the leaders in our community.

We’re proud to welcome them into this remarkable community of changemakers and excited for the impact they’ll have in shaping the future of social good. Read on to learn more about their journeys and the expertise they bring to the NationSwell network.

Kim Dabbs

STRATEGIC ADVISOR
Areas of Expertise: Belonging and Purpose, Social Innovation, Organizational Culture, DEI, Identity and Purpose, Workplace Culture, Organizational Development

Kim Dabbs is the Global Vice President of Impact at Steelcase, where she drives social innovation and fosters inclusive environments. With a background as the Executive Director of the West Michigan Center for Arts and Technology and a residency at Stanford’s d.school, Kim brings deep expertise in creating equitable spaces.

 She is the best-selling author of You Belong Here: The Power of Being Seen, Heard, and Valued on Your Own Terms, which provides a framework for cultivating belonging. Kim is also the founder of To Belonging, a global community of changemakers exploring the intersection of identity and purpose. As a sought-after speaker, Kim has delivered keynotes at organizations like Google, Microsoft, MIT, and The Guggenheim, helping leaders create inclusive and impactful workplaces.

Shannon Schuyler

STRATEGIC ADVISOR
Areas of Expertise: Culture Activation; Aligning Purpose with Performance; Value Creation through Operational and Revenue Resilience; C-suite and Board engagement

Shannon Schuyler brings over three decades of experience transforming how organizations drive sustainable success through cultural innovation and purpose alignment. At PwC, she held multiple global leadership roles, including Chief Purpose Officer, Chief Sustainability Officer, Chief Diversity Officer, Climate Risk Leader, Corporate Responsibility Leader, co-Leader of CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion, and President of the PwC Foundation. She has guided C-suite executives and boards across industries in embedding purpose, values, and sustainability into organizational strategy, culture, and stakeholder engagement. Shannon has also served on nonprofit boards, leading strategic planning, pro-bono funding initiatives, and executive succession.

Her insights on the link between culture and strategy have earned recognition from Fortune, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Insider, and Fast Company. Named one of the 100 People Transforming Business and a World Changing Woman in Conscious Business, Shannon is a sought-after speaker and advisor who helps organizations align purpose, culture, and strategy to achieve lasting business and societal impact.

Celeste Warren

STRATEGIC ADVISOR
Areas of Expertise: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Organizational Culture, Talent Development, STEM Education, Leadership Strategy, Change Management

Celeste Warren is the Founder of Celeste Warren Consulting, LLC, where she guides organizations in implementing impactful diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies. With over 28 years of experience, she previously served as the Vice President and Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer at Merck, where she led global diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and developed diverse talent pipelines.

Celeste is also the co-founder of Destination STEM, Inc., a nonprofit focused on supporting students of color and students in need pursuing degrees in STEM. Her work has earned her recognition as one of Black Enterprise’s “Top Executives in Global Diversity and Inclusion” and Diversity Global Magazine’s “Influential Women in Global Diversity.” She was also named Chief Diversity Officer of the Year by the National Minority Supplier Development Council in 2024.

A published author and frequent speaker, Celeste’s diversity, equity and inclusion insights have been shared globally across major platforms, publications and conferences.

To learn more about our membership community, visit nationswell.com/membership

The NationSwell Council on “The Movement to Reconnect”

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

Experts have been sounding the alarm on a quiet crisis unfolding across the country: Americans are more disconnected than ever. A growing body of research points to rising rates of loneliness, fraying community ties, and a deepening sense of isolation that cuts across age, geography, and background. The costs are profound — not only to individual mental and physical health, but to our collective resilience and social fabric.

Against this backdrop, the NationSwell Council set out in the second quarter of 2025 for a Salon series dedicated to “The Movement to Reconnect”: the tapestry of solutions — such as increasing funding, inclusive programs, and spaces for meaningful interaction — that help foster stronger, more resilient communities.. In a time when polarization and disconnection often dominate the headlines, these conversations offered something different: a reminder that healing is possible when we come together in warm, curious, and collaborative ways.

We’re proud to present a selection of the insights that were shared during the course of the series — along with some powerful reflections from the leaders in attendance — below:

Key Insights

1. Service creates shared purpose and builds belonging. Participating in service-oriented activities can strengthen community ties, provide individual meaning, and counteract divisive ideologies by grounding people in shared action.

2. Polarization is flattening our relationships — and our humanity. When people are reduced to their political or cultural identities, empathy and curiosity suffer. Creating space for constructive dialogue can restore dimensionality and connection.

3. We need both bonding and bridging. Affinity spaces allow individuals to recharge within shared identity groups, while bridging spaces foster trust and understanding across difference. Both are essential for social cohesion.

4. Ritual and moral frameworks matter for belonging. Practices like gratitude, storytelling, and trauma acknowledgment — often rooted in religious tradition — can be adapted to modern settings to foster collective meaning and connection.

5. Crises are catalysts for community renewal. Moments of collective hardship can serve as inflection points to rebuild stronger, more inclusive social bonds — if we seize them with creativity and shared values.

6. Narratives shape connection. Stories that emphasize resilience, interdependence, and shared futures foster unity; divisive or fear-based narratives drive alienation and distrust.

7. Inclusive, systemic solutions are needed. Programs alone won’t solve disconnection. True impact requires structural changes, inclusive design, and active participation from those most affected.

8. Connection must be resourced and rewarded. Sustained funding, capacity-building (like train-the-trainer models), and recognition for community leaders are critical to scaling what works.

9. Higher education and local communities are key incubators. Colleges and municipalities are well-positioned to model and scale tools for connection — but must build facilitation expertise and ground efforts in local realities.

10. We need a new metric of success: community care. As we reimagine what it means to thrive, collective well-being must be valued alongside personal achievement—centering care, interdependence, and shared responsibility.

11. Loneliness is a public health crisis — and Gen Z is at its center. Young people report record levels of loneliness and a lack of meaning or purpose, exacerbating the youth mental health crisis and signaling urgent need for systems-level support.

12. Human connection is both a basic need and a powerful social tool. Strong interpersonal bonds are essential for emotional well-being — and also serve as the foundation for broader societal resilience, civic trust, and collaborative problem-solving.

13. We lack spaces for spontaneous, organic interaction. Despite widespread desire for face-to-face connection, many communities lack accessible “bumping spaces” — like parks, plazas, and community centers — where casual encounters naturally occur.

14. Technology is distorting social norms and deepening disconnection. Social media has normalized passive communication and amplifies polarization, making it harder — especially for youth — to initiate in-person connection or bridge divides.

15. Connection across differences requires intention and infrastructure. People are eager to connect across race, class, and ideology, but few are given the tools, invitations, or safe settings to do so meaningfully.

Recommended Resources

Reflections from Council members

We asked members in attendance to respond to the following prompt: “How can organizations redesign their workplace cultures to promote stronger interpersonal relationships and a sense of belonging among employees?”

“Workplaces are becoming more diverse, including more intergenerational with Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers. It is necessary for them to adapt and create more inclusive environments. What is important is to humanize the workers. This can include opportunities to get to know each other. This goes beyond happy hours. It can be through ERGs. It can be through offsites. Options that speak to each generation and also identities that span generations is a strategy I have seen work.”

  • King Adjei-Frimpong, Director of Stakeholder Engagement

“If an organization is fully remote or hybrid, it’s important to invest time and space for meaningful connection to take place online. For example, as part of your weekly team coordination call, have your team share what they did over the weekend. Or bring another prompt for people to respond to. When you do meet in person, make sure to allocate time for connecting and fun. Then, measure your employees’ sense of connection and loneliness at work with this following survey tool to see how well your employees are doing.”

  • Calista Small, Research Manager, More in Common US

“Creating formal opportunities for employees to connect with each other outside of their day to day responsibilities can have a positive impact. At Girls Who Code, we recently had an org-wide step challenge (optional) with meaningful prizes for team and individual winners. Participants were broken up into random teams and it was a way for folks to have fun with and motivate each other to achieve wellness goals while instilling a little healthy competition. 

Consistently using brief ice-breakers at the start of a meeting, whether cross-functional or within a team, provides a light-lift opportunity for folks to keep learning about one another and finding connections.”

  • Tarika Barrett, CEO, Girls Who Code

“The “constant of change” is an invitation to reimagine workplace cultures, to harmonize feeling our best with doing our best. Innovation operates at the speed of trust, and we build velocity by forging affirmation, belonging, and co-creation across people and teams. 

One of my favorite levers – aka antidotes versus the old normal – is storytelling. That is how we can flip disengagement into empowerment, for any generation. I also work with organizations to shape a unity of purpose around goals and processes, which breaks down silos. At a policy level, I am striving to radically reimagine decision making. If we can transform the rooms where it happens – through student advisory boards, Dad Councils, and more – we will catapult our north star goals.”

  • Mohan Sivaloganathan, executive leader and keynote speaker

“I’ve learned from nearly two decades leading social impact organizations that belonging isn’t automatic. It emerges only when the conditions are right. Workplace cultures that foster belonging share a common characteristic — high trust between employees. I know from experience that trust begins with clarity. My mantra is to make the implicit explicit. Leaders do this by setting shared expectations, naming unspoken norms, creating space for authentic emotion (celebration and grief alike), and both setting policies and enforcing norms that make it safe for employees to bring their full selves to work. I’ve seen firsthand that, when that groundwork is in place and reinforced consistently, employees will connect and collaborate on a genuinely human level.”

  • Bethany Rubin Henderson, CEO, Compass Pro Bono

“At the Movement to Reconnect Salon, I found myself most drawn to the question of how we intentionally create space for connection—especially across lines of difference. In a time when division can feel easier than dialogue, I believe deeply in the power of community-rooted relationships to shift what’s possible. Whether within organizations or broader communities, we need to design for belonging—not just hope it happens. That means slowing down, listening with curiosity, and prioritizing trust-building as real work.”

  • Michael Pope, Executive Director, Youth Represent


Five Minutes with… Bonterra

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

Amidst stagnating rates of charitable giving and volunteering in the U.S., Bonterra — a software company focused on helping nonprofits, foundations, corporations, and beyond scale their impact — has a mission to boost giving and volunteerism to 3% of U.S. GDP by 2033. So, they took a fresh approach to Bonterra’s annual impact report. Developed in partnership with NationSwell, the 2025 Impact Report gives Bonterra’s customers actionable insights on how to empower the “Generosity Generation”: a cross-generational community empowered by technology to unlock time and dollars, in order to increase giving and drive the impact they want to see in the world.

For this installment of Five Minutes With, NationSwell spoke with three key Bonterra leaders to unpack the report’s insights: Ben Miller, SVP of data science and analytics; Kimberly O’Donnell, chief fundraising officer; and Sara Kleinsmith, principal strategist for thought leadership and corporate messaging.

“Collaborating with Bonterra to create their new Impact Report was an inspiring challenge,” said Amy Lee, Chief Strategy Officer at NationSwell. “We worked very closely with Ben, Sara and their team to push beyond standard insights. Bonterra has a wealth of smart insights from its products and relationships, and we wanted to make sure that whatever we included was data-driven, forward-looking and on target for the goal to catalyse a new Generosity Generation.”

We asked the Bonterra team how they blended proprietary data with powerful storytelling to create a tool that goes beyond standard, backward-looking reporting — serving instead as a strategic blueprint for how organizations can rethink, revamp, and re-energize their entire approach to impact with intentionality and inspiration at its core. 

Here’s what they had to say:

NationSwell: Tell us a little bit about what you set out to accomplish with this report. What were your initial goals, and how did they evolve?

Ben Miller, Bonterra: One thing we know about movements is that they aren’t a start and stop experience — they’re ongoing. So when we sat down to think about creating this report, we did it through the lens of building the “Generosity Generation” — a multi-age community of donors, volunteers, funders, and nonprofit leaders that gets activated with the help of technology to respond to crises faster; build lasting relationships; and overcome all of the barriers that have caused charitable giving and volunteering in the US to remain stuck at 2.5% of GDP for over 50 years.

In a way that mirrors what our technology is designed to do, we wanted to create a report that could deliver insights in a faster, more personalized way, and that was an important framework adjustment that served us well. We didn’t spend as much time as we had in the past focusing on the tallies and the totals (although they are still there in the report to substantiate our findings) — we wanted to dive right in. We also added an interactive tool that allows organizations to benchmark themselves against other organizations. 

NationSwell: How did Bonterra’s proprietary data play a role in shaping the report?

Ben Miller, Bonterra: One of our huge strengths is that we have a true data science team, not just data marketing folks. Logan, our chief marketing data analyst, constantly pushed back, saying “there’s nothing here” or “this isn’t strong enough,” and as a result we discarded a lot of findings. You might not see it at first glance, but the analysis was thorough. We only included insights that were statistically sound and actionable. A lot of reports don’t go that deep, but our team basically operates like scientists.

Existing data tells us that only 19.4% of donors give a second gift, but our finding was that once they do, they’re far more likely to stick around. That first 90 days is absolutely critical, but there are also folks who give way later — giving up entirely will likely not serve you in the long run. We also saw that about 10% of donors give after more than a year. So even if someone doesn’t respond in that first 90 days, it doesn’t mean they’re gone; you just have to treat them differently.

Sara Kleinsmith, Bonterra: That ties into another data point: 63% of nonprofits stop after one rejected grant application, but on average it takes 1.24 tries to get funded. So many organizations are missing the chance to go back, learn, refine, and try again. Fundraising is evolving, and there’s a real opportunity in persistence and learning from the first “no.”

Ben Miller, Bonterra: Data shows that only 53% of people trust nonprofits — the lowest that trust has ever been, which is a huge issue. But our research shows that you can use digital to help restore some of the trust and humanity that’s been lost over the years. We saw it in disaster response in particular: people were ready to engage, and digital tools helped nonprofits meet that urgency. So it’s not just about maximizing each channel, it’s about using those channels to build relationships. That’s the core insight: digital doesn’t have to mean disconnected — it can actually bring people closer, if we’re intentional.

NationSwell: What were the internal conversations like on how to strike the right balance between qualitative and quantitative storytelling?

Sara Kleinsmith, Bonterra: We’ve done a lot of customer stories and case studies, so we had strong qualitative storytelling to draw from — our customers at Bonterra have incredible missions and impact. The challenge was linking those stories to the data.

One way we did that was during a recent webinar, when we matched our customers to specific data points and asked them to speak to the proof we wanted to showcase. It became a kind of matching exercise — pairing the mission, the people, and their challenges, like burnout or federal funding cuts, with the insights from Ben’s team. From there, we asked: which customers can speak to this? How is Bonterra helping solve these problems?

Ben Miller, Bonterra: Instead of starting with who we knew and pulling from what was available, we started with the data: who’s doing X really well? Then we went out to those organizations and asked if they’d share their stories. That led to fantastic case studies.

Kimberly O’Donnell, Bonterra: Most impact reports rely on examples people already know are good. What we did was different — we had enough breadth to ask: who’s doing this best, why, and what’s the “secret sauce”? What makes a fundraising campaign or grant program truly transformational?

NationSwell: What were some of the lessons you learned in putting this report together — were there any unexpected obstacles or challenges? How did NationSwell help you to meet those challenges?

Ben Miller, Bonterra: One of the toughest parts was wanting the data to tell the story while also realizing that waiting on the data meant risking not having enough time. We had to pivot together as insights emerged. We’d spot something interesting, ask, “Is there more here?” and then look for supporting organizations.

It was also challenging because we were rigorous. We reviewed the data four or five times, and sometimes had to revise earlier numbers. That could’ve created confusion or mistrust, but instead it fostered transparency and a shared commitment to getting it right.

Internally, we all understood we were working toward something meaningful, and NationSwell played a huge role — the team didn’t push us down a rigid path, they were flexible and helped us shape the right story as the right data came in.

Sara Kleinsmith, Bonterra: We kept revisiting: what comes first, the data or the narrative? At one point, we were curious about generational giving — Gen Z, millennials, boomers, Gen X — who’s giving the most, who should we be reaching? But it was hard to chart that internally. Then Ben had this great idea: instead of age, what if we looked at impact maturity — where someone is on their giving journey? Are they a first-time donor or a lifelong giver?

That shift reframed everything. Rather than focusing on age, we began thinking in terms of giving readiness. It made the concept of the “Generosity Generation” more inclusive — a multi-generational group of givers and doers, each with different motivations and maturity levels.

It felt like a win — something that came out of a shared insight between us, NationSwell, and Ben’s framing. Generational labels can be reductive, but generosity spans all ages. This unlock helped us to better meet people where they are in their giving life.

NationSwell: Based on the report’s insights, what are your call-ins for our membership community when it comes to charitable giving? What feels most important for them to take away from this report?

Kimberly O’Donnell, Bonterra: Our call to action is to digest the data — there are six key takeaways, some relevant to nonprofits, others to funders and corporate partners. Think critically about how your practices compare, and how you might adopt or adapt based on what the findings show.

Sara Kleinsmith, Bonterra: And for anyone creating thought leadership or content — especially those reaching donors, partners, or investors — we’re at a critical point in how we work with AI. Writers, marketers, and creators need to be transparent: How are you using AI? How are you using human creativity alongside it? Customers, donors, and volunteers want to understand that balance. It’s evolving fast, and being clear and thoughtful about it positions you as a leader, no matter your sector.

Kimberly O’Donnell, Bonterra: That ties into how we delivered this impact report — it’s unique. If you’re advising others on their own reports, show how each takeaway connects directly to your audiences in digestible ways. It’s not just about showcasing big impact or good stories. What are the three to six insights you want readers to remember?

Ben Miller, Bonterra: Our big goal is 3% by 2033. We can’t get there alone — we’ll need everyone to contribute. If you’re part of the NationSwell community, join us. Even a 2% improvement across your network, your organization, your campaigns — it all adds up. That’s how we hit the goal: through collective action and shared best practices. That’s what the Generosity Generation is about.