Resource Type: đź”’ Member-only

Impact Team Offsite-in-a-Box

Impact Team Offsite-in-a-Box

Team offsite conversations can serve the purposes of reconnecting colleagues, grounding them in a shared organizational ambition and inviting individual and collective ownership over the direction of the team’s work. This resource supports impact leaders with modular sessions to design effective, energizing team offsites that drive clarity, connection, and strategic alignment. It is based on agendas that NationSwell has created for its own team conversations or in partnership with member organizations. 

Share this report
Recommended Features
5
Office workers gathered around the table against a gray background.

Corporate Impact Investing Design Toolkit

Corporate Impact Investing Design Toolkit

This resource is a toolkit aimed at supporting corporate social impact investors in developing their investment strategy. The toolkit includes seven implementation tools developed from the report, “Seven Critical Design Choices for Corporate Impact Investors.” The tools provide step-by-step actions to structure, integrate, and standardize impact investing practices within corporations.

Share this report
Recommended Features
Impact Investing
Handshake

Corporate Social Impact Models and Approaches

Corporate Social Impact Models and Approaches

EXECUTIVE BRIEFING
Posted on
Request content

This practical guide is designed to help leaders and organizations orient their existing social impact strategies within a larger context, and identify opportunities to progress.

The guide includes four models of corporate social impact in practice today, ranging from CSR to business-integrated strategies. Each model includes definitions, actionable recommendations, and real-world case examples. The goal is to help leaders determine the best way to deepen impact within your organization, which may mean advancing from one model to the next or further developing your current model.

The models covered in this guide include:

  • Traditional CSR
  • Asset-driven impact
  • Shared value initiatives
  • Systems change leadership
Share this report
Recommended Features
Handshake
Team meeting

Funding Response Navigator

Funding Response Navigator

This resource serves as a decision-making tool to support philanthropy leaders within private foundations and companies respond to nonprofit funding gaps. It outlines four steps designed to help leaders determine the most appropriate adjustments to a philanthropic strategy. The tool also explains the potential benefits and risks involved in taking specific strategic approaches, and provides adoptable tactics to support strategic changes.  

Four steps included in the tool: 

    1. Assess your foundation’s strategic priorities
    2. Identify risks and benefits of action
    3. Explore your funding response options
    4. Take action
Share this report
Recommended Features
Team meeting
hands in

Snapshot of Employee Engagement Trends

Snapshot of Employee Engagement Trends

NationSwell surveyed 60 impact leaders between February 26 and March 5 to better understand employee sentiment and engagement trends in early 2025. Participants ranged across organization types, including corporations, non-profit organizations, corporate foundations, and private philanthropies. This resource provides key learnings from the research, as well as four ways impact leaders can boost engagement. 

Key learnings and results from that survey include:

  • Employee engagement is trending lower in 2025
  • Leadership communication is inconsistent
  • Most engagement initiatives remain, but flexible work is being reduced
  • Burnout is the top engagement challenge
  • Employees need more transparency leadership
  • Most organizations use engagement data to support their business case

Four ways impact leaders can boost engagement:

  • Make the case for internal transparency between leadership and employees
  • Defend essential employee engagement infrastructure
  • Collaborate with HR partners on workforce wellbeing initiatives
  • Invest deeply in making work purposeful for employees, regardless of setting
Share this report
Recommended Features
White board at a work meeting with post-it notes
Male senior leader speaking to a group of employees

Effective Storytelling Strategies for Impact Leaders

Effective Storytelling Strategies for Impact Leaders

This resource is a practical guide for impact leaders looking to build or refresh their storytelling strategy. It distills several key components to building meaningful impact stories, including understanding key audiences, mapping out appropriate channels and timing, and developing meaningful and action-oriented messaging and content. The guide also includes examples from the NationSwell community to illustrate storytelling in action. The aim is to tell stories that are creative, human-centered, and audience-first. 

The components covered in this guide include:

  • Goals
  • Audience
  • Channel
  • Timing
  • Core Message
  • Call-to-action
Share this report
Recommended Features
Team meeting
Coworkers gathered around a wooden table in the sunlight

Making corporate DEIB more durable

Making corporate DEIB more durable

EXECUTIVE BRIEFING
Posted on
Request content

Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) professionals are facing heightened political and legal opposition to their day-to-day work. At times, it’s challenging to truly know if and how companies, and DEIB leaders themselves, are shifting their commitments or approaches. 

The reality is that some businesses are pausing or re-evaluating their DEIB strategies. A number of companies are reducing investments in DEIB or choosing to proceed more quietly. But the pendulum is swinging in both directions. There is evidence that the material work of DEIB has endured and will continue to endure. 

Based on interviews with chief diversity officers and other DEIB executives, this report is intended to support leaders and organizations in confidently charting a path forward at a moment of heightened scrutiny.

The resource teaches the four components of a resilient approach to corporate DEIB and includes tactical guidance, real-world examples, and implementation tools.

The four components:

  • Leverage data as the backbone of your commitment
  • Cultivate and activate accountable champions at all levels of the organization
  • Center transparency, honor progress, and strive for continuous improvement
  • Get intentional about future-proofing DEIB
Share this report
Recommended Features
1
pexels rfstudio
absolutvision WYd PkCa1BY unsplash
pexels christina morillo