Topic: Community development

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.

Impact Next: An interview with Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs (RICE)’s Jay Bailey

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

At a moment of inequality and division, who is advancing the vanguard of economic and social progress to bolster under-served communities? Whose work is fostering the inclusive growth that ensures every individual thrives? Who will set the ambitious standards that mobilize whole industries, challenging their peers to reach new altitudes of social impact? 

In 2026, Impact Next — an editorial flagship series from NationSwell — will spotlight the standard-bearing corporate social responsibility and impact leaders, entrepreneurs, experts, and philanthropists whose catalytic work has the potential to shape the landscape of progress amid urgent need for social and economic action.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed James “Jay” Bailey, President and CEO of the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs (RICE). Here’s what he had to say:

Greg Behrman, founder and CEO, NationSwell: What brought you to the field that you’re in right now? Was there an early moment, a relationship, or an experience that galvanized your commitment to driving bold action?

James Bailey, President and CEO, RICE: Part of my story is I’ve always been entrepreneurial: I started my first business at 12, bought my first house at 19, and made my first million by 23, but I didn’t have the right role models, and by 28, I’d lost everything. I went from a 10,000-square-foot house to living in a nine-by-nine storage unit. And that’s where I had to confront the truth: by the world’s standards, I had been successful, but I had zero significance. I hadn’t done anything to put a dent in this world.

A big part of that story goes back to losing my mother, Millie L. Bailey, when I was 19. She never made more than $40,000 a year, but she was one of the greatest philanthropists I’ve ever known. She worked with young people in the juvenile justice system, brought kids home for Christmas, made sure they felt seen, valued, and loved. When she died, all of that left my life, and money became my hiding place. Big houses, nice cars — all of it covered up a kid who was grieving.

I remember thumbing through a photo album and seeing pictures of all these kids throughout my life that my mother would make a part of our lives, ensuring that they had exposure to something different. Slowly I found my way back to my core, and to her example, and that’s when I stopped chasing success and started dedicating my life to significance.

Behrman, NationSwell: Is there a particular program, signature initiative, or some facet of the work that you would like to spotlight for us that is driving outcomes for the work?

Bailey, RICE: I love Atlanta. I was born and raised here, and I believe Atlanta has the chance to be the most consequential city of the next 100 years: the collision of corporations, culture, and community — if we get our act together — could create something few cities can match. But I love my city enough to be honest: we’re the worst city in the country for income inequality and economic immobility. And if you’re not willing to talk about race, I think you’re being intellectually disingenuous about solving it.

There are no poor white neighborhoods in Atlanta. There are no failing Latino schools in APS. Ninety-nine percent of the demographic drivers behind those statistics look like me. So when I chose to focus on Black entrepreneurs, it wasn’t just a social cause — I was thinking like an economist. If we’re 52% of the population but our companies account for just 8% of economic growth, there’s a disconnect keeping Atlanta from becoming everything it could be.

That’s why we chose entrepreneurship. Not because it solves everything, but because it can move the needle. I’ve long believed we lose GDP every year because brilliant ideas on the south side of the tracks never reach the marketplace — because people don’t believe they belong. And that’s why we rejected the traditional, episodic model of programming alone. Programming matters, but our goal was transformation.

You can’t ignore the loneliness, the depression, the isolation, the generational poverty and trauma. Before someone can grow a business, they have to see value in their own reflection. They have to feel belonging. Then you build the scaffolding — the infrastructure, the support, the pathways to actually start and scale. Both are necessary for the people we serve.

That’s built into the DNA of the Russell Center. It’s one of the few places in the country where the place that serves the people is built, run, and supported by the people it serves. Our architect, our contractor, the products on my shelf, even the snacks — they all come from our entrepreneurs. That circular economy creates allegiance, covenant, and community. And at the heart of it all, more than access to capital, is culture: a community of collaboration, support, and belief. That mindset shift is everything.

NationSwell: What makes this model different — what you have learned from the outcomes you’re generating?

Bailey, RICE: My core inspiration was the HBCU model — historically Black colleges and universities — which have been one of the greatest economic mobility engines in our community for the past 100 years. I wanted to build the entrepreneurial equivalent of that experience; I didn’t want a model where you come for four weeks or 18 weeks, graduate, and that’s it. What’s unique about what we do is that it’s a continuum of engagement across the life cycle of a business; you don’t graduate out.

That ties back to the circular economy we’ve built: companies that are thriving pour into the ones coming behind them. It creates the same kind of culture you see on a college campus — seniors tutoring freshmen, freshmen aspiring to be seniors. Every day, even outside the curriculum, people are being inspired, exposed to new pathways, and changed by proximity, and so much of that transformation has nothing to do with what’s on the transcript.

That model pushed us to think about serving the whole entrepreneur beyond just what we can teach. How deeply can we understand what makes a person himself, what he is trying to do, and what actually works for him? That’s why I value business experts at the same level as therapists and psychologists in our curriculum: That whole-person approach — our ability to grow, retain, and build real community as we grow — is something I haven’t really seen anywhere else.

Behrman, NationSwell: Can you walk us through a couple different facets of the work you’re leading that are particularly exciting to you right now?

Bailey, RICE: One of my biggest learnings in this work is that, yes, access to capital will always matter for entrepreneurs; you plan for that. But what I’ve found is that community is a deep need, in many cases even more urgent than capital. 

Where I come from, I didn’t grow up seeing a lot of Black billionaires or people running multinational companies. And when 98% of Black-owned businesses have just one employee, there’s a reason for that. So much of it comes down to how we see ourselves as entrepreneurs. I bought into the narrative that success meant hustling, grinding, doing everything yourself. What I want at the forefront of our work is breaking through that mindset — giving people the exposure, access, and belief to say, ‘Why couldn’t my idea become the next great company?’ That kind of exposure creates belief.

The second thing we’ve identified is a huge donut hole in the ecosystem: the growth-stage entrepreneur who isn’t a venture-backed tech unicorn, but a bedrock, missing-middle business. If you’re a startup with an idea, there’s support. If you’re a high-growth tech founder chasing a massive exit, there’s support. But if you’ve got 15, 20, 30, even 150 employees and you’ve plateaued, there’s almost nobody built to help you break through. That’s why we’re building out the Scale Studio to surround those companies with the accountants, attorneys, consultants, and capital they need to grow. The businesses stabilizing our economy are the ones getting the least support.

And the third is campus expansion. Early on, when we mapped the barriers to starting and growing a business, things like housing, childcare, and healthcare were at the top of the list. So one of our big ideas is: how do we go from a 70,000-square-foot campus to something bigger — adding housing, medical care, affordable office space, and other supports around the entrepreneur? How do we fully build out that whole-entrepreneur model and make sure Atlanta stays affordable enough to dream? Because if the city becomes so expensive that people with ideas have to leave, then dreams can’t live here. We want to be a speed bump against that.

So those are the three big areas for us: mindset as part of the theory of change, support for the missing middle that no one is really serving, and expanding beyond our current footprint to truly meet the needs of the people we support.

Behrman, NationSwell: Of the socially motivated leaders you consider your peers, are there any whom you hold in particularly high esteem, and how has their approach shaped your own leadership?

Bailey, RICE: There’s one in Atlanta who absolutely needs to be on people’s radar: Dr. Lakeysha “Key” Hallmon, the founder of The Village Market. I remember meeting Key when she was just a teacher with a big idea, and now she’s built real spaces for entrepreneurs, business owners, and creatives. 

In Detroit, Alexa and Johnnie Turnage, the husband-and-wife team behind Black Tech Saturdays, are two of the most inspirational people I know; they make technology sexy and fun. I’ve been to Detroit to speak with them, they’ve brought their team down to Atlanta, and the passion they have for moving the community forward is infectious. 

And then, when I think about my core motivation, I have to name someone who’s no longer with us: Maynard Jackson, Atlanta’s first Black mayor. I draw endless inspiration from him. His courage helped change the direction of Atlanta and, in many ways, the South. He paid a real price for it, but he made that sacrifice to create opportunity. He’s responsible for creating more Black millionaires than any other mayor in American history, and he did it with grace, style, humility, and empathy. His legacy is still shaping all of us.

Behrman, NationSwell: Are there any resources you’d recommend — books, podcasts, Ted talks — that have influenced your thinking that might influence others as well?

Bailey, RICE: I quote Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” constantly, and then there’s “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley — Out of the night that covers me / black as the pit from pole to pole … I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul. Those are two I come back to. And honestly, another quote that I return to all the time is simpler: “don’t quit.”

In terms of other things that influence my thinking, I’m a city boy with country leanings. My wife and I are landowners here in Georgia, and nothing clears my mind like getting out of the city, getting into the country, and hopping on my four-wheeler. For some people it’s a massage, a round of golf, whatever people do to unwind — for me, nothing compares to being on that ATV and just riding.

There’s something about it that brings me real joy, release, and freedom. The engine is so loud you can’t hear your phone, can’t feel it vibrate, can’t hear it ring. And that means, for a little while, you’re free — free to just be, without any connectivity to the device or the world. It’s how I get away from everything, and it’s one of the things I cherish most.

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]. 

Five Minutes with… the Northern New Mexico Pathways to Opportunity Strategy Table

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

As funders look to move from isolated grants to systems-level impact, the need for durable, place-based models that communities can shape — not just receive — has never been clearer. In northern New Mexico, the LANL Foundation and the Annie E. Casey Foundation are collaborating with twenty other funders to pioneer the next frontier of place-based funding with the Northern New Mexico Pathways to Opportunity Strategy Table: a 15-member collaborative that brings philanthropy, public agencies, community leaders, and young people themselves together to align resources for those too often left out of education and workforce pathways.

What began as a listening process and a fund-mapping exercise has since evolved into a distinctly ambitious model that blends pooled philanthropic, corporate, and public dollars; youth-led participatory grantmaking; and capacity-building designed to help nonprofit  and tribal organizations grow stronger over time. The result is a more community-rooted way of thinking about how grant funding moves, who helps shape it, and what long-term success looks like.

For this installment of Five Minutes With…, NationSwell spoke with Alvin Warren, Vice President of Policy and Impact at the LANL Foundation, and Tomi Hiers, Vice President of Center for Civic Sites and Community Change at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, about what it took to move this work from convening to action, why the Strategy Table built youth voice into the model from the start, and what other funders around the country can learn from this effort. 

NationSwell: What is the Strategy Table, and what challenge was it built to address?

Alvin Warren, LANL Foundation: From our side, it’s important to understand that we’re a 100% place-based foundation based in Española, New Mexico, and we serve a predominantly rural and tribal region across north-central New Mexico. We were created to address a very specific geography: a seven-county, eighteen-tribe region of northern New Mexico.

One thing I knew from my time at Kellogg was that when national funders looked at New Mexico, they often focused only on Albuquerque, and there are understandable reasons for that, especially when funders are trying to meet numerical targets. But what struck me were the many opportunities to invest in good work in rural New Mexico — including work aligned with Casey’s Thrive by 25 framework — and yet that work often wasn’t visible or accessible to larger funders. Sometimes it was happening at a smaller scale; sometimes there were structural barriers that made it difficult for national funders to support smaller, rural organizations or tribes.

So we realized a mechanism might be needed to both draw attention to the opportunities and needs in Northern New Mexico and also make it logistically possible for funders, especially national funders, to invest in a way that felt informed, respectful, and shared. That’s really the blueprint for what the Strategy Table became.

Tomi Hiers, Annie E. Casey Foundation: At the Annie E. Casey Foundation, we made the decision to dedicate roughly 50% of our grantmaking to improving access to opportunity for young people ages 14 to 24 through our Thrive by 25 commitment, and we wanted to begin implementing that work in three places: our hometowns of Baltimore and Atlanta, and also Albuquerque, New Mexico — a place where the Foundation had already been active for about two decades, particularly around systems impacting justice-involved and child welfare-involved youth.

As we started thinking about a place-based strategy in Albuquerque and about working in deep partnership with nonprofits helping young people connect to education, training, employment, youth leadership, and financial stability, we knew it was important to understand the local philanthropic landscape. As a national funder, there can sometimes be tension around how national philanthropy shows up in a place, so we wanted to be a strategic co-investor; we wanted to know who the local funders were, what their priorities were, how those priorities aligned with ours, and how they wanted national philanthropy to support their work.

That’s how we began building relationships with local funders, and with Alvin, who was then at Kellogg and later transitioned to LANL Foundation. Those early conversations about what was important in the broader community, and what kinds of partnerships could help address barriers facing young people, were really the building blocks that eventually led to the Strategy Table.

NationSwell: What makes this different from a traditional workforce or economic development effort?

Warren, LANL Foundation: Northern New Mexico has one of the highest rates of disconnected, or “opportunity,” youth in the country: nearly one in four. For some populations, including Native youth and young parents, that number can be even higher. And this is happening in a region that also has real deserts of opportunity — places where access to paid internships, career training, or youth development programs are limited or uneven. So the goal isn’t simply workforce development in the conventional sense, it’s about transforming the landscape of opportunity so that young people, regardless of where they live in the region, have access to meaningful pathways.

What makes this model distinct is that it’s a pooled fund with three important differences. First, it’s designed to pool philanthropic, corporate, and public dollars, which is relatively unusual. Second, the grantmaking is done through a youth-led participatory process. And third, the model includes dedicated capacity-building support through a Regional Resource Hub, so grantees aren’t just getting one-off dollars, they’re also getting technical assistance, peer learning, and support to become more competitive for larger public and philanthropic funding over time.

Hiers, Annie E. Casey Foundation: What was attractive to us about the Strategy Table was that it offered leverage, sustainability, and scale. We rarely go it alone as a funder; we think a lot about how to use philanthropic dollars to leverage public funding or to bring other philanthropic partners into the work. We’re always asking: how do we have impact beyond a few hundred young people served directly? How do we influence policy and practice?

So part of what was exciting here was that there were already strong efforts underway, and a number of the funders at the table were supporting that work, including state agencies. The question became: how do we scale the best and most promising practices around education, training, and employment for young people, especially those who are often left behind and locked out of opportunity?

NationSwell: How have the Annie E. Casey and LANL Foundations helped move the work from convening to action?

Warren, LANL Foundation: We formally launched in 2021, and the first major step was a fiscal map. We partnered with the Children’s Funding Project and used the Thrive by 25 framework to do a five-year lookback on philanthropic investments in the region. Initially, we were only going to look at philanthropy, but the Casey Foundation pushed us to include public investments as well, and that was transformational; it would have been a huge missing piece otherwise.

At that point, the table had grown from an initial group of four funders to about ten. When the fiscal map was completed, we made what turned out to be a very important decision: instead of releasing the report publicly right away, we paused and took the findings out to our community first. We held a series of community gatherings, including a tribal-specific gathering, across the region, including in very rural communities. We also ran a survey and held focus groups, including one focused on underrepresented youth and another for policymakers and public funders. That process took about a year, and it was all about listening to how community understood the data and what they believed should happen next.

The other major shift from convening to action came when Casey helped us recognize that if we were serious about this, we needed infrastructure. Casey was the first funder to commit real resources to support the backbone and operations of the collaborative. Without that early investment, we would not have been able to grow the table or move toward implementation.

Hiers, Annie E. Casey Foundation: We think a lot about leverage. There’s power in bringing other funders to the table and in aligning philanthropic dollars with public systems. For us, this was an opportunity to support a table that was already rooted in a particular place and to help build something that could influence systems, not just fund isolated programs.

Once the fund mapping report came back, it became easier to think strategically. It helped us understand both where resources were flowing and where they weren’t. There was one county, for example, where the lack of investment was striking. That allowed the table to ask: What problem are we trying to solve, and what can a pooled set of more nimble philanthropic resources actually do?

From there, it was about planning carefully and building toward a model that could invite local partners into a meaningful, well-designed process for competing for and receiving resources.

NationSwell: What does the most helpful philanthropic support look like in a collaborative like this?

Hiers, Annie E. Casey Foundation: Flexibility is really important. In the early days, there was some willingness from other funders to include Albuquerque because Casey was doing work there. But we took the position that even though we were active in Albuquerque, this table was focused on northern New Mexico, and that was okay. We didn’t want our partners to contort themselves to make something work for us just because of how we had originally framed our priorities.

So for other funders or strategic partners joining a table, I think one of the biggest lessons is: if there are places where you can be flexible in service of the broader effort, you should seriously consider that.

Warren, LANL Foundation: I’d add that impact comes from infrastructure. Funders often want as much money as possible going directly out the door, and of course that matters. But if you under-resource the infrastructure it takes to do something complex like this, you undercut the impact. That means staffing, facilitation, evaluation, communications, support for the youth advisory members, and all the connective tissue that makes a collaborative actually function. Those investments may not always feel as exciting as direct grants, but they’re what make the grants more effective.

The other thing is: lend a hand. This doesn’t work if one organization is doing all the labor. Casey and other funders have actively helped make introductions, bring in new partners, and expand the pool, and that’s part of how we’ve grown the number of contributing funders. 

And finally: show up. It matters when national funders come in person, meet grantees, and participate face to face. That presence builds trust and changes the quality of the relationship.

NationSwell: What’s one anecdote or example of progress you’ve seen that shows the model is working?

Hiers, Annie E. Casey Foundation: One sign is simply that partners are still there, and new partners keep joining. My understanding is that this kind of table is something relatively new for northern New Mexico: funders coming together in this way with each other, with public systems, and with the broader community. The fact that the table has held together and continued to attract interest is itself a meaningful sign that the model is offering something valuable.

Warren, LANL Foundation: We’ve now been able to make 19 grants, almost all at the $100,000 level, with a couple slightly smaller based on what grantees requested. Based on grantee data, we anticipate reaching at least 800 young people by the end of the first year.

What’s especially exciting is the growth in participation in the pooled fund itself. As of the end of last week, we had 21 corporate and philanthropic funders either contributing or engaged in supporting the youth fund in some way, including 17 philanthropic funders and four corporate funders. And our largest state agency partner, the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions (essentially our Department of Labor), has committed a $1.5 million match for our second grantmaking round.

NationSwell: What’s been your biggest challenge in standing up this work, and what have funders needed to understand about that complexity?

Warren, LANL Foundation: One of the biggest challenges was the tension between moving thoughtfully and moving quickly. We spent what I think was an appropriate amount of time doing shared analysis and relationship building. That meant bringing funders together repeatedly, defining terms, developing guiding principles, and getting clear on what success actually meant across organizations with very different strategies and metrics.

That took time — a couple of years, really. And during that period, there were certainly people saying, “We’ve been in this space too long; we need to move to action.” That pressure is understandable. But if you don’t spend time building shared understanding, you can end up with a collaborative that looks aligned on paper but isn’t actually aligned in practice.

Hiers, Annie E. Casey Foundation: I think it also helps to have a broader definition of success. To me, the table being formed was a success. Having diverse philanthropic and public partners at the table was a success. Conducting the fund map and having honest conversations about what the data told us, and what it didn’t, was a success. Those things matter. And then, yes, the grants and the impact on young people are the “cherry on top,” but the process that led there matters too.

NationSwell: What felt important about building youth voice and participatory grantmaking into the Strategy Table’s design from the start?

Hiers, Annie E. Casey Foundation: Youth leadership is one of the pillars of Thrive by 25, and our Foundation has also been doing a lot of work around intergenerational engagement. It’s one thing to talk about youth voice or youth development. It’s another to think seriously about how adults and young people actually sit together, share decision-making, and govern together.

That was part of what made this model so intriguing to us. I’ll be honest — I didn’t know exactly how it would play out. I had questions: How would the youth advisory group be structured? Who would support them? How would adults and young people sit alongside each other in a real decision-making process? But when you’re part of a collaborative, you also have to trust the design process and the partners at the table. This was a chance to see what meaningful youth leadership and intergenerational governance could actually look like in practice.

Warren, LANL Foundation: We were very intentional about making sure the young people involved actually reflected the populations the work is designed to serve. The original members of the Regional Youth Advisory Council represented Native youth and Opportunity Youth, among others. In fact, two of the most active members are young parents.

We also didn’t just bring in young people who had never been exposed to philanthropy or leadership spaces. We recruited young people who had already participated in youth development efforts and were ready for this to be the next step in their leadership. And the reason we were able to do this well is because we had already spent so much time developing shared guiding principles that became a touchstone for the table. They made it much easier to say: if we really believe these things, then youth leadership and participatory grantmaking aren’t optional — they’re part of the model.

NationSwell: What can other funders and regional leaders take away from this model?

Hiers, Annie E. Casey Foundation:  Flexibility is one of the biggest takeaways. If you’re joining or building a collaborative, there may be places where you can loosen your grip on your own preferences in order to strengthen the broader effort, but that doesn’t mean losing your priorities, it means being willing to support something bigger than any one organization.

Also: time matters. If you want to build something durable, you have to resist the urge to rush to visible outputs before the foundation is there. Build intentionally, document what matters, and be prepared to adapt as the work evolves. The goal is not speed for its own sake — it’s sustainability.

And finally, I advise folks to define success broadly. The process of building alignment, doing the analysis, surfacing the data, and creating a real table with diverse stakeholders is not just pre-work, it is part of the impact.

Warren, LANL Foundation: If I had to put it in bullet points, I’d say:

  • Be willing to learn together. We wouldn’t have this table, or this success, without the Casey Foundation, our other Strategy Table partners, and other contributors. In particular, if Casey had gotten a year in and said, “Actually, it’s been great, see you later,” I honestly don’t know where we’d be. 
  • Stay the course. Philanthropy is often too quick to pivot just as things begin to work. When you stay the course, you begin to build capacity and move towards long-term impact. 
  • Recognize that impact comes from infrastructure. You don’t win by undercutting the resources it takes to do something this complex. Funders have to invest in the infrastructure, too — staffing, evaluation, communications, facilitation, the support it takes to manage and train the Regional Youth Advisory Council. All of that is what makes the impact possible, alongside the dollars going into the fund itself.
  • Lend a hand: Don’t assume one backbone organization should do all the labor.
  • Show up, especially in person. National funders, in particular, need to remember that their presence matters. It matters when they come to the community, meet grantees, and participate via relationships, not just transactions. That can make all the difference.

The Northern New Mexico Pathways to Opportunity Strategy Table is made possible by a collaborative of 15 members: Anchorum Health Foundation, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions, The Cricket Island Foundation, LANL Foundation, Los Alamos National Laboratory Community Partnerships Office / Triad National Security, LLC, Las Vegas (New Mexico) Community Foundation, Marshall L. and Perrine D. McCune Charitable Foundation, New Mexico Foundation, Regional Youth Advisory Council, Santa Fe Community Foundation, Taos Community Foundation, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Thornburg Foundation, United Way North Central New Mexico, and W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

The Placed-based Action Map

The Placed-based Action Map

Where is effective place-based impact actually happening, and who is involved? Until now, it’s been difficult to answer that with any clarity.

The Place-Based Impact Map allows users to explore initiatives across the U.S., making it easy to explore what’s happening in your region and others, and who to reach out to for insights. And the map offers place-base leaders an opportunity to promote their work to curious funders and regional supporters. A companion to the Place-based Impact Measurement Toolkit.

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The Principled Approach: Place-based Measurement Toolkit

The Principled Approach: Place-based Measurement Toolkit

Measuring impact can be hard to do accurately and effectively. Place Based Impact Measurement in particular, because every region and neighborhood is different. That can lead to overlapping KPIs and confusion over how to chart progress, and scale good ideas.

So, NationSwell’s Place Based Collaborative have created a new resource to address this gap:‘The Principled Approach’ — A toolkit to guide thoughtful, community-led, effective
measurement of place-based impact.

Whether you are embarking on place based work, or deep into it, this toolkit illuminates the key principles that put communities at the heart of not just the programs being funded, but the way the success of those efforts is quantified. A perfect companion to NationSwell’s Place-based Action Map.

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Five Minutes with… The Greater Tacoma Community Foundation’s Kathi Littmann

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

What does it look like for a community foundation to meet the moment not just as a funder, but as a convener, translator, and catalyst for long-term change? As a longtime steward of community resilience across Pierce County, Washington, the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation is embracing that challenge by connecting unlikely partners across the region and creating the conditions for communities to influence and shape the systems that affect them.

For this installment of Five Minutes With…, NationSwell spoke with Kathi Littmann, president and CEO of The Greater Tacoma Community Foundation, about the evolving role of community philanthropy, the importance of building resilience alongside capacity, and what other foundations can learn from Pierce County’s collaborative model.

Here’s what she had to say:

NationSwell: How would you describe the role The Greater Tacoma Community Foundation plays in the region, and what makes your approach to community philanthropy distinct?

Kathi Littman, President and CEO, The Greater Tacoma Community Foundation: We serve Pierce County, which is in the Puget Sound region between Seattle and the state capital. It’s a gritty, deeply collaborative community that has always known how to do a lot with limited resources, and that really shapes who we are as a foundation.

GTCF has been here since 1981, and we’ve grown from about $10,000 to more than $200 million in assets, so today we’re a mid-sized community foundation. At our core, our prime directive is honoring donor intent: what do our fund advisors love about Pierce County, and what kind of legacy do they want to leave here?

At the same time, when we’re working with discretionary resources, we’re very focused on systems change. We’re always asking how we can help meet urgent needs today, but we’re thinking in parallel about how we can address those problems long-term so that we’re not responding to them forever. For us, that means removing barriers to generational wealth and well-being across Pierce County.

Our strategic framework is built around four interconnected pillars: housing, youth, civic voice and power, and access to capital and wealth. Those issues all intersect, but right now we’re especially focused on civic voice and power in that we’ve been shifting our thinking from helping nonprofits build capacity to helping communities build resilience. Capacity is about doing what you already do, better; resilience is about being able to adapt, lead, and meet a changing moment.

And while we do a lot of grantmaking, our real superpower is not just the money, but the relationships. It’s convening across sectors, connecting people, catalyzing ideas, and helping communities use their lived experience to influence the systems shaping their lives. That’s really GTCF’s sweet spot, and it’s what makes us uniquely suited to this moment.

NationSwell: What would you say GTCF’s secret sauce is as a convener? What lessons have you learned that are transferable for others hoping to build community trust? 

Littmann, GTCF: Pretty consistently, whether we’re working with a government agency, a national funder, or one of our own donor-advised fundholders, people come to us because they know we’ll connect them to others who care about the same issues and help them make smarter decisions about how they invest in the community. They see us as thought partners, and just as importantly, as connectors to other thought partners.

That’s why I often say some of the highest-value things we offer go well beyond the grants themselves. A good example of this is the intermediary work we’ve done with the Washington State Department of Commerce, where we’ve helped move state dollars into communities faster by serving as the contract holder and intermediary so that nonprofits receive those funds as grants rather than taking on the administrative burden and risk of a government contract.

That work led to another important role: Last fall, the state Speaker of the House and the Pierce County Executive asked us to convene nonprofits around the impact of federal budget cuts on county services. We brought in service sector and network leaders, grounded the conversation in data, and created an ongoing space to understand the ripple effects across housing, food access, Medicaid, employment, and more.

That’s really our model: community-centered philanthropy. The people closest to the issue understand the barriers, and our role is to convene them, amplify their voices, bring in research and examples, and help translate lived experience into action.

NationSwell: How are you thinking about what it means to be a community foundation in this moment? What are the unique challenges that you’re facing, and how does your work go beyond traditional grantmaking? 

Littmann, GTCF: Being a community foundation is both inspiring and a little daunting, because in theory we’re built to be here in perpetuity. That means we have to lead with hope — not just for what Pierce County needs right now, but for what we want this community to look like seven generations from now. That’s a beautiful mission, but it’s also a heavy one, especially in a moment when so many systems feel misaligned with that long view. What we’ve learned is that even when there’s trauma and scarcity, there is real power in bringing people together around possibility and helping communities imagine solutions that reduce the need for crisis response over time.

A few lessons consistently guide how we do that work. First, we’re always asking: are we in the right role? If someone else should own it, we’re not trying to hold it. One reason communities trust us is that they know we can incubate and convene, but also that we’re not trying to keep control. Second, we’re constantly asking who’s not at the table; we don’t need to convene everyone, but we do need the right voices in the room. Third, one of our unique roles is helping the community see the bigger picture — surfacing patterns, gaps, and ripple effects that individual organizations may not be able to see on their own. And finally, we believe deeply in passing the mic. Our role is not to speak for communities, but to create the conditions for people to speak for themselves through our platform and relationships.

We’re also very intentional about building relationships beyond Pierce County, because some of our best learning comes from statewide and national partnerships. Pierce County is a strong testing ground: it’s diverse, collaborative, and in many ways a microcosm of the country. That makes it a powerful place not just to serve community needs, but to learn what kinds of philanthropic approaches actually work.

NationSwell: Can you share an example of a partnership, initiative, or investment that reflects how you’re trying to meet this moment differently?

Littmann, GTCF: I’ll start with our Department of Commerce work around the Community Reinvestment Project, which was a $200 million state initiative designed to address harms caused by the war on drugs and which we stepped into as an intermediary for Pierce County. We signed the contract, negotiated the terms, provided upfront funding, and convened a local advisory team made up of leaders from the sectors most impacted. We also trained them in community-centered philanthropy, because many had been conditioned to navigate contracts and compete for funding rather than help shape how resources move. Then they helped decide how the money went out.

We were able to move funds quickly and get grant dollars into the hands of local organizations, but what became most interesting was what happened beyond Pierce County. The Department of Commerce wanted to serve the whole state, and we stayed in our lane while helping foundations in the other priority counties replicate the model. We shared our contract, encouraged them to step into the same intermediary role, and built a coalition across the state. We were asking: what does this look like in a rural county? In a place with a huge geographic footprint? In a community with fewer people but different needs? We eventually brought in a third-party evaluator, captured what we learned, and shared it back with the Department of Commerce. That’s the kind of role we can play as connectors, conveners, and catalysts: helping partners scale while learning in real time.

Another example is our work with the Pierce County Resiliency Hub, which feels especially relevant right now. As federal funding started to shrink, we heard from two longtime community leaders — the Washington State Speaker of the House and the Pierce County Executive — both of whom came up through grassroots and agency leadership. They reached out and essentially said: Pierce County has done this before; when resources get tight, the community has to come together and get ahead of it, and GTCF is in a unique position to help make that happen.

That really speaks to our role beyond grantmaking. We can convene, yes, but we also serve as a knowledge facilitator. One of the hardest questions right now is simply: how much federal money has actually been flowing into Pierce County, and where is it going? That’s incredibly difficult to answer. Funding reaches municipalities, the county, the state, and individual organizations in different ways. So one of the first things we did was secure a researcher to help us build what we’re calling reliable data. With so much federal data becoming harder to access or disappearing altogether, we wanted a shared source of truth the community could trust.

NationSwell: As you look ahead, what feels most important for community foundations to get right in the next few years if they want to build long-term resilience and opportunity?

Littmann, GTCF: First, we have to be truly client-centered in how we make philanthropy accessible. The products themselves can be confusing: donor-advised funds, designated funds, changing tax laws, qualified minimum distributions. For someone simply trying to figure out how to do good with what they have, it can be overwhelming, and our role is to make that process feel human, clear, and usable.

Second, we have to get our financial model right. Like many organizations, our organic revenue doesn’t fully cover the catalyst and convening work we know has the highest impact. So it’s our responsibility to sustain GTCF in a way that reflects a theory of abundance, not scarcity. That means being able to clearly articulate the return on investment: if you support GTCF, you’re helping ensure we can meet the moment not just now, but 10, 20, or 50 years from now. That kind of long-term stewardship matters, and so does making sure we can retain the staff who make that work possible.

Third, we need to create the time and bandwidth to influence the field. We do our best work when we’re running alongside like-minded foundations, businesses, agencies, and partners. But that kind of collaboration takes time. It requires real relationship-building and a willingness to understand not just what someone is doing, but how they’re doing it and, most importantly, why.

And that leads to the last piece: narrative. If we’re truly thinking seven generations ahead, we can’t just document what we did or how we did it; the most important thing to preserve is why. If future leaders understand the values and reasoning underneath a decision, they can adapt the tactics to meet their own moment without losing the thread.

Five Minutes with… Walton Family Foundation’s Tina Fletcher

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

The Arkansas-Mississippi Delta is a case study in what community-rooted investment can make possible. Too often framed through deficit and disinvestment, the Delta is also a place of deep resilience, cultural richness, and local leadership; a region where people have been building and adapting solutions for generations, often without the level of sustained support they deserve. 

Tina Fletcher, who helps lead the Walton Family Foundation’s work in the Delta, is focused on helping shift that narrative by pairing long-term commitment with a community-centered approach to partnership. Across education, economic mobility, and leadership development, Fletcher’s work centers on strengthening what’s already working in the region and connecting the people and institutions best positioned to carry that momentum forward.

For this installment of Five Minutes With…, NationSwell spoke with Tina about what makes the Delta such a distinctive and inspiring place to work and why the greatest opportunity may be less about reinventing the Delta than investing in the talent and leadership that’s already there.

Here’s what she had to say:

NationSwell: For those less familiar, how would you describe the Delta — and what makes this region both unique and inspiring to you?

Tina Fletcher, Senior Program Officer, Walton Family Foundation: When it comes to the Delta, what stands out to me is just how much determination and resilience already exists. The Delta is a region rich in culture, community, and getting things done, with deep relationships and a strong sense of place that you can feel immediately. What makes it especially inspiring is that, despite being under-funded, the Delta has never lacked the capability to thrive. The Delta is full of people who have been leading and building for generations, people who aren’t waiting for solutions; they’re generating them in real time and in and meaningful ways. What’s needed now is investment that recognizes and accelerates that momentum because when you shift from “What’s wrong?” to “What’s working?”, the Delta looks entirely different.

NationSwell: How would you describe the Walton Family Foundation’s strategy on building trust and momentum in the Delta region over time?

Fletcher, WFF: At the Walton Family Foundation, our Delta Region strategy is simple, but not easy: show up, listen, be a good partner, and stay committed. Building trust in the Delta means investing in relationships just as much as we invest in results. In my role, I focus on strengthening what’s already working across education, economic mobility, and leadership, while finding creative ways to connect the individuals driving progress. I also bring a learning mindset to every table and conversation  I join, using data to inform the work without losing sight of community voice. That combination-commitment, consistency, humility, and rigor—is what turns trust into real momentum.

NationSwell: Can you share a moment or partnership in the Delta that changed how you think about community-centered philanthropy?

Fletcher, WFF: The biggest shift for me has been seeing what happens when communities aren’t just included—they’re in the lead. Across the Delta, I’ve seen young people, educators, and local leaders design solutions that are more relevant, effective, and sustainable than anything we could prescribe from the outside. I saw this firsthand in Jonestown, Mississippi, during a conversation with Mayor Columbus Russell, Jr., the youngest mayor in the state, and again in Helena-West Helena, Arkansas, led by Mayor Joseph Whitfield. Both are young, energetic leaders working in step with residents, partners, and funders to move their communities forward. Those moments reinforced that proximity matters. Community-centered philanthropy isn’t just about engagement, it’s about shared ownership. When communities lead together, the results aren’t just impactful, they’re sustainable. And that’s when the work doesn’t just land, it takes root.

NationSwell: For funders looking to invest in the Delta, what guidance would you offer to ensure their approach is both effective and community-centered? What are some common mistakes you’d recommend they avoid?

Fletcher, WFF: First, start by listening and plan to stay longer than you initially imagined. The Delta doesn’t need more one-off investments; it needs partners willing to build over time. Fund what’s already working, invest in capacity, and trust local leaders to guide the way. A common mistake is chasing quick wins without understanding the broader system or underestimating how long trust takes to build. In the Delta, philanthropy must focus on building trust and staying committed, because that’s what ultimately drives results. Opportunities for impact are real and plentiful, but they require patience, partnership, and a deep belief in the people closest to the work.

NationSwell: As a leader, how has working in the Delta shaped your personal leadership style, or clarified what kind of leadership this work requires?

Fletcher, WFF: This work has taught me that leadership isn’t about having all the answers, it’s about creating the conditions for the right answers to emerge. In the Delta, that means listening deeply, sharing power, and being intentional about whose voices shape your decision-making around the work. It’s also reinforced the importance of staying grounded in both data and humanity, balancing the desire for accountability and rigor with the realistic challenges Delta communities face. As a result, I am much more focused on connecting dots amongst stakeholders, leverage my organizations connections to benefit the communities we serve, funding what has proven to work, and making space for others to learn and lead. The kind of leadership this work requires is steady, collaborative, and deeply rooted in trust.

NationSwell: What gives you the most optimism about the future of the Delta, and where do you see the greatest opportunities for impact in the years ahead?

Fletcher, WFF: What gives me optimism is the talent and leadership already present, especially young leaders who are stepping up to shape what comes next, alongside seasoned leaders supporting them along the way. There’s a growing ecosystem of organizations doing powerful work, and the opportunity now is to connect and scale those efforts. I see real potential in more intentionally linking education to economic mobility, creating clear, local pathways from learning to earning and investing. The Delta doesn’t need to be reinvented; it needs to be invested in. And for funders willing to lean in, this is a moment with real momentum.

When and How AI Can Improve Grantmaking

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

AI is moving fast, but grantmakers are rightly cautious. Funders are under pressure to move money more efficiently, learn faster, and support grantees better, all without adding risk, burden, or opacity to an already complex system. The question is no longer whether AI will touch grantmaking, but where it can actually add value—and where it shouldn’t.

On April 16, NationSwell invited philanthropic and impact leaders to take part in a conversation on the practical use of AI in grantmaking. The conversation featured ideas about when AI can meaningfully improve decisions and workflows and how to adopt it in ways that strengthen, rather than undermine, equity, accountability, and relationships with grantees. Some of the most salient takeaways from the discussion appear below:

Key takeaways:

Assess where AI meaningfully adds value across the grantmaking process. Rather than applying AI indiscriminately, organizations should take a step back and evaluate workflows end-to-end to determine where these tools can be most effective. A thoughtful, system-level approach can promote AI application in ways that enhance, rather than complicate, existing processes.

Use AI to streamline manual and error-prone grantmaking workflows. Financial due diligence can be a highly manual, time-intensive, and error-prone process, often involving spreadsheet-based analysis or visual review of financial statements. AI tools like Grant Guardian were developed to improve accuracy and efficiency in this specific workflow. 

Reinvest time savings from AI into deeper grantee engagement. Small grantmaking teams often face hundreds of applications, creating capacity constraints. AI can be used to support summarization, rubric-based pre-review, and prioritization to help manage this volume. The reduction in processing time, from hours to minutes, can allow staff to spend more time having meaningful conversations with grantees and improving the quality of their work. 

Recognize and normalize AI use among applicants and grantees. There is growing recognition that applicants and grantees are using AI to improve efficiency, particularly in drafting and responding to applications. When used thoughtfully, this can help reduce administrative burden, though differentiation still relies on the substance of proposals and outcomes.

Consider supporting grantees’ capacity to adopt AI tools and infrastructure. As AI becomes more embedded in workflows, there is an opportunity for funders to think about how grantees can access and use these tools effectively. Supporting this capacity, particularly through flexible, operational funding, can help organizations integrate AI in ways that enhance their work, rather than treating it as a one-off programmatic expense.

Develop and deploy AI systems with responsible AI principles. Specific principles should guide all AI adoption work in grantmaking, including safety and transparency, community-centered design, bias mitigation, human-in-the-loop validation, enterprise-grade security, and sustainability considerations. Start AI adoption through structured experimentation with clear guardrails, and consider empowering early adopters to test tools within defined parameters (e.g., “stoplight” approaches to acceptable use). These frameworks can also support clearer communication and transparency about how AI is being used.

Consider AI disclosure as contextual and relational: Whether and how to disclose AI use in grantmaking processes depends on organizational policies and levels of AI involvement. While practices may vary between organizations, especially as technology grows and with wider experimentation, keep a relational and trust-based mindset.

Maintain human oversight as a core requirement in AI-assisted workflows. AI is never a substitute for human judgment, and validation and verification by users must be built into the process. Being explicit about this, both internally and externally, can help reinforce trust, particularly in a field like philanthropy that is deeply relationship-driven and values human expertise.

Design for customization of AI tools to reflect different evaluation contexts. Grantmaking organizations assess financial health and programmatic fit differently, and AI tools can be configured with varying metrics, thresholds, and profiles to match those needs. This flexibility can also support more context-sensitive and equitable evaluation approaches; for example, assessing early-stage organizations differently than more established ones. 

Impact Next: An interview with the Caterpillar Foundation’s Asha Varghese

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

At a moment of unevenness and division, who is advancing the vanguard of economic and social progress to bolster under-served communities? Whose work is fostering the shared growth that ensures every individual thrives? Who will set the ambitious standards that mobilize whole industries, challenging their peers to reach new altitudes of social impact? 

In 2025, Impact Next — an editorial flagship series from NationSwell — will spotlight the standard-bearing corporate social responsibility and impact leaders, entrepreneurs, experts, and philanthropists whose catalytic work has the potential to shape the landscape of progress amid urgent need for social and economic action.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed Asha Varghese, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Caterpillar and President of the Caterpillar Foundation.

Greg Behrman, founder and CEO, NationSwell: What brought you to the field that you’re in right now? Was there an early moment, a relationship, or an experience that galvanized your commitment to driving bold action?

Asha Varghese, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Caterpillar and President of the Caterpillar Foundation: What brought me into this work wasn’t a single defining moment but really a series of experiences that shaped how I see opportunity, equity, and the role the private sector can play in expanding both.

A big part of that goes back to growing up between two very different worlds. I spent my early childhood in Kerala, India, and my family didn’t move to rural Kentucky until I was 12. On the surface, those places couldn’t have looked more different, but what connected them for me was how deeply access to opportunity shaped people’s lives. I was fortunate to grow up in a family that believed fiercely in education and pushed us toward careers, especially in STEM. But many people in both of those communities didn’t have the same access. Living between those two worlds taught me resilience, but also a lasting awareness of how much opportunity — or the lack of it — can define a person’s path.

The other set of worlds I’ve learned to navigate is more professional: I’m a computer engineer by training, and I now work in corporate philanthropy and social impact. Those fields may seem far apart, but for me they’re deeply connected: Engineering taught me how to break down complex problems, innovate with limited resources, and build thoughtful, durable solutions, and I bring that same mindset to social impact work.

That’s really how I think about this role: bridging the discipline and problem-solving orientation of the private sector with the urgency and complexity of social development. It’s the combination of those personal and professional experiences that led me here.

Behrman, NationSwell: What is the “North Star” of your leadership style? What are some of the attributes that make you an effective leader in the space?

Varghese, Caterpillar: I’d say my North Star as a leader is creating stable pathways for people to thrive, no matter where they’re starting from. That’s true for how I lead as an individual, and also for how I show up representing our brand.

I actually got a lot of clarity on that through the Presidential Leadership Scholars program, which brings together leaders to study the leadership styles of past U.S. presidents. One of the most powerful exercises they put us through was identifying your single core value — the one you’d choose if you could only pick one. For me, that value was stability.

That really clicked for me because it ties so directly to my own journey. Stable environments created opportunity in my life, and that’s shaped how I think about leadership ever since. Any solution I’m building, any initiative I’m helping lead, I want to make sure I’m leaving behind something that outlasts me: a system that is durable, intentional, and built to support people over time.

The other value that has become increasingly important to me over the last decade is empathy. And I don’t think of empathy as a soft skill but as strategic clarity. It’s about listening deeply to communities, to teams, to emerging leaders, and making sure their voices shape the systems we’re building. At the core of all of it, I believe in expanding access to opportunity. That’s what guides the work I do.

Behrman, NationSwell: What is helping you or anchoring you to a sense of stability in the current moment?

Varghese, Caterpillar: A good example of that is the work we’ve been doing at Caterpillar around the future of work. Last year, as we celebrated the company’s centennial, we used that milestone not just to reflect on our legacy, but to sharpen our focus on people.

In a moment defined by AI and rapid technological change, the question for us is not whether technology matters; of course it does. The question is: how do we make sure people and technology can coexist and thrive together? That’s where a lot of my work is centered right now.

It connects directly to our broader commitment around workforce development and the future of work. For the next generation entering the workforce, the path forward can feel increasingly unclear. At the same time, there are many workers, especially in manufacturing and adjacent sectors, who understandably worry about being left behind. So the challenge for us is how to help create stable pathways for both groups: pathways that help young people navigate what’s next, and pathways that help current workers adapt with confidence.

That’s the work in front of us right now: taking a massive, complex problem and breaking it down into scalable solutions that help people feel more prepared, more included, and more secure in the future.

Behrman, NationSwell: What is unique or differentiated about the approach that you’re taking? Can you walk us through what excites you most about the work that you’re leading?

Varghese, Caterpillar: It’s hard to pick a single initiative, but the work I’m most energized by right now is our growing enterprise-wide commitment to workforce development. We’ve supported that work in different ways for years, but this deeper focus across the company gives me a lot of optimism because it’s so clearly centered on people.

More broadly, one approach I’m especially proud of is how we think about shared-value philanthropy: designing strategies that create real social impact while also aligning with the unique role a company like Caterpillar can play. Over the last six years, through a pandemic, humanitarian crises, and all kinds of global volatility, we’ve stayed committed to showing up consistently in communities. And what I’m proudest of is that we’ve done it by keeping community at the center — not by assuming we know the answers, but by listening, collaborating, and building solutions that can outlast us.

A good example in the U.S. is the Caterpillar Foundation’s work with Learning Undefeated, which uses game-based experiences to get K–12 students, especially middle schoolers, excited about STEM and modern manufacturing. It’s a creative way to tackle perception and interest early, and it brings in not just students, but teachers and other adults who influence their choices.

Globally, the Foundation is also focused on partnerships that treat jobs as the outcome, not just training. That’s what I appreciate about partners like IYF and Generation: the goal isn’t simply to hand someone a certification. It’s to ask, did this person get a job, and are they still in it six months later? That’s the kind of economic progress that matters. 

Behrman, NationSwell: Are there any particularly cool or illustrative examples of how Caterpillar is showing up in communities?

Varghese, Caterpillar: One longstanding area of work I’d point to is our disaster relief and humanitarian response portfolio through the Foundation. What I find especially meaningful about it is that we don’t think about disaster response as just the immediate relief effort (though that’s obviously critical). We also focus on how communities can be better prepared before disaster strikes, so local organizations are ready to respond quickly rather than starting from scratch in the middle of a crisis.

And just as importantly, we stay engaged after the headlines fade. Once the cameras are gone and the community is still recovering, we look at long-term mitigation and resilience, which is where this work connects directly to our sustainable infrastructure portfolio. That means asking: what kinds of nature-based or infrastructure solutions can actually reduce the impact of future floods, fires, droughts, and other climate-related events?

To me, that portfolio really reflects the consistency of how we try to show up as a company. Whether it was COVID, wildfires in California, or flooding in parts of Africa, the goal is the same: respond in the moment, but also invest in the systems that help communities recover and withstand what comes next. That’s a strong example of what shared-value philanthropy looks like for us.

Behrman, NationSwell: Are there any resources you’d recommend — books, podcasts, Ted talks — that have influenced your thinking that might influence others as well?

Varghese, Caterpillar:  On the resource side, a couple of things come to mind right away. Podcast-wise, I really like the TED Radio Hour episode on “Networks.” It resonates deeply with how I think about leadership and impact — that solutions grow at the speed of trust, and that ecosystems and relationships really matter.

I also really enjoy Fortune’s Leadership Next. It’s a great look at how CEOs and corporate leaders are thinking about leadership today, especially when it comes to integrating social responsibility into business strategy. That intersection feels very relevant to the work I do, so I always find something useful there.

Book-wise, one that has really stayed with me is Atomic Habits by James Clear. It’s helped me stay disciplined and intentional about how I want to show up, both personally and professionally. I also subscribe to his weekly newsletter, which I find grounding and consistently useful.

Behrman, NationSwell: Of the socially motivated leaders you consider your peers, who are 2-3 whose work inspired you and whom you hold in high esteem?

Varghese, Caterpillar: The person who most inspires me is my father, Dr. Roy Varghese. He came to the U.S. in the 1970s and ultimately chose to spend more than 30 years of his career in rural Kentucky, helping revive a struggling hospital in a small town where he was, for a long time, the only physician. He could have chosen to practice anywhere, but he chose to stay there; that says so much to me about resilience, purpose, and intentionality. The way he showed up in medicine, and the way he stayed rooted in service, has had a profound impact on how I think about leadership.

Beyond that, I’m inspired by so many leaders across the social development space — especially those who lead with steadiness, creativity, and a commitment to building systems that outlast them. It’s a tough and often chaotic world, and I have a lot of admiration for the way so many nonprofit and corporate leaders continue to show up with consistency and conviction for the greater good.