Topic: Leader development and support

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.

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.

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.”

Impact Next: An interview with the International Youth Foundation’s Christina Sass

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 Christina Sass, President & CEO of the International Youth 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?

Christina Sass, President & CEO, International Youth Foundation: The short version is that I’m obsessed with youth employment. I genuinely believe it’s one of the most sustainable ways to get and keep people out of poverty. That’s why I focus on jobs for young people — I don’t want them to need things they can’t afford for themselves. When we help young people build skills they can take anywhere, we create change that lasts across generations.

That’s why this is my issue area, and why I tell people all the time: if you have a dollar or an hour to give, give a young person a chance who wouldn’t otherwise get one. Yes, you can do that through a charity like IYF, but honestly, if you have a job to offer in your own organization, that may be the most powerful thing you can do.

The reason this is so deeply personal is that it tracks closely with my father’s story: He immigrated to the U.S. from Germany at 22 with a suitcase and a couple hundred dollars to join his older brother. He was born in 1942, so you can imagine that his childhood was characterized by World War II, a devastated society, a family separated for years. His father was a prisoner of war for the first six years of his life; their family was internally displaced. His brother, my uncle, found a path forward through the brick masons, then volunteered for the U.S. Army as a way to stay in the country. My dad got a chance to build his career by coming over to live with his older brother. They were both hungry for opportunities.

His first job in the U.S. was picking up trash in a park while he barely spoke English. His second was moving boxes in an IBM warehouse — back when IBM was probably building typewriters, long before computers. But my dad was a true lifelong learner. He noticed that the most expensive machine parts were going missing, and he spent all night practicing enough English to ask his boss a question: why not keep the most valuable parts in one place and require people to check them out? His boss said, “Why don’t you build it?” And he did.

My dad retired after 32 years at IBM. Along the way, he kept leaving to get more education, kept pushing for opportunities, and was also lucky enough to have people take a chance on him — on someone who barely spoke English. That changed everything for our family. My dad is the reason my brother and I had the life we had; somebody gave him a chance. He passed away when I was a sophomore in college, and it was devastating for all of us, but his story still looms large for me.

So yes, this work is deeply personal, and it also happens to align with something I genuinely love. I stay so focused on youth employment because I’ve seen what it can unlock: in my own family, in my brother’s life, and in so many other young people’s lives.

I’ve taken multiple swings at the same question: How do we get young people into jobs at scale? Because I think we’ve failed badly at this. Educators say young people are ready for work; employers say they need two to three years of experience. And for the most at-risk young people, that gap is rarely merit-based. We can do so much better at opening doors early — and giving young people the chance to realize their full potential.

Behrman, NationSwell: Tell us a little bit about your current role and how you came to it.

Sass, IYF: International Youth Foundation is currently in its 35th year of operation, and I am the fourth CEO. All of the CEOs are around and super supportive of the work, which is a really cool legacy to have. IYF was founded by Rick Little, who was really ahead of his time in recognizing that young people face a distinct set of challenges in the transition from school to work, especially when there isn’t a clear path into employment.

I came to IYF in 2024, after spending 10 years building Andela, a platform connecting global companies with developer talent, especially in Africa. Bill Reese, IYF’s longtime second CEO, had been a mentor of mine for years, so when he reached out and said, “This is your issue area, would you consider it?”, it was a pretty extraordinary invitation.

What drew me in was the chance to work at a different order of scale. At Andela, we were intentionally building outside the system. At IYF, we’re working inside it — which comes with more constraints, but also a much bigger opportunity to create lasting change.

At its core, IYF focuses on youth economic opportunity, especially through training and job placement. We think broadly about who we serve: young people, of course, but also employers, school system leaders, and the funders who make this work possible. Our programs are strong, our outcomes are strong, and the work now is about growing awareness, expanding our reach, and continuing to evolve to meet young people where they are in a very complicated moment.

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?

Sass, IYF: One great example is a program we run with FedEx in Mexico and Colombia called Jóvenes con Entrega, which roughly translates to “youth who deliver,” both literally and in life.

The idea is simple: we look at where there are real hiring gaps, then work backward with employers to build training directly into the school day. In this case, FedEx had a huge need for entry-level logistics workers, especially as nearshoring accelerated across the region. So we worked directly with their HR and logistics teams to map the skills they needed, build a curriculum around those requirements, connect Fedex mentors to program participants, and integrate into technical high schools. We initially trained teachers ourselves, then transitioned that ownership to the school systems.

Since 2018, that program has served more than 50,000 young people, with job placement rates more than double what they would be otherwise. Nearly half of participants are young women, which is especially meaningful because many were initially being steered toward “safe” roles like secretarial work. We had to make the case that logistics was not only viable, but safe, respected, and far better paying, and once families saw the first graduates succeed, the momentum really took off.

Another example I love is our work with the banking sector in Mexico. For years, you needed a four-year economics degree to become an entry-level bank teller, which made no sense for the role and excluded a huge amount of talent. We worked with banks to rethink the job around skills instead of credentials, and helped create a pathway for technical high school graduates to move directly into those roles. We’re now on our third cohort, and it’s been transformative for the young people involved (and a much better talent match for the banks, too).

Behrman, NationSwell: What is unique or differentiated about the approach that you’re taking? Can you walk us through a couple different facets of the work you’re leading that are particularly exciting to you right now?

Sass, IYF: We work with about 50,000 young people a year in what I’d call a high-touch way, meaning they’re getting the full curriculum in a classroom setting, often through technical high schools or school systems. The number is actually higher if you include lighter-touch engagement, like online learning, but 50,000 is the number we use when we’re talking about deeper transformation.

In 2025, 90% of young people who started an IYF program completed it, and 75% went on to a better economic outcome, whether that was job placement, enrolling in higher education, advancing in their current path, or starting something entrepreneurial. Overall, about 87% are connected to work in some meaningful way: employed, in education that leads to employment, or in training that improves their economic prospects. We also have very high net promoter scores with young people, and our partners tend to stay with us for the long term — on average about seven years, with some partnerships lasting 14 years or more. That matters, because systems change is almost always a multi-year effort.

I think the reason young people rate our programs so highly is simple: we design them with young people, not just for them. That “nothing about us without us” mindset is core to how we work. Our life skills curriculum, Passport to Success, is a great example: it’s active, relevant, and grounded in the real pressures young people are navigating, from anger management to gender norms to workplace expectations. Then we build the technical training on top of that. So the real secret sauce is strong systems-level partnerships combined with program design that is genuinely responsive to young people and accountable to them.

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?

Sass, IYF: I think my superpower as a leader is that I’m wired to empower other people. My instinct is not to hold power tightly, it’s to give it away. I’m pretty vulnerable as a leader, and I talk openly about what I’ve learned about myself and how I work. I want to build a true team of rivals: extraordinary people with different strengths, fully unlocked to do their best work.

At the center of my leadership is not power or control, but the opposite: If we’re going to scale, we have to align people around the mission, bring in incredible talent, and then trust them.

That mindset was also shaped by an extraordinary executive coach I’ve worked with since my second year at Andela, Jeff Hunter of Talentism. His core methodology is based on the idea that leaders, particularly founders and entrepreneurs, have to see themselves clearly and design around what they actually are best in class at, and that framework has had a huge impact on me. To use myself as an example, I am a great individual contributor, but I am not a good day-to-day clarity manager. That tells me that I need to hire those people, and they need to manage those facets of the work. So I relentlessly try to see myself clearly and design well around myself, and then I hire people with high mission-alignment in mind. I believe that the best teams out there have a lot of psychological safety, so I try to start with vulnerability, lead with vulnerability, and really mean it when I say that I’m handing the reins over.

Resiliency and Innovation in Nonprofit Leadership

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

A year after federal funding cuts, the dismantling of USAID, and politicized targeting of organizations advancing equity and justice, many nonprofits have been forced to adapt—revisiting their models, rethinking partnerships, and finding new ways to sustain mission-critical work amid heightened uncertainty.

On March 10, NationSwell and fellow nonprofit leaders gathered virtually for an honest, forward-looking discussion on what resiliency and innovation look like now, exploring how organizations are evolving to protect their missions, secure new sources of support, and design fresh solutions to address the widening gaps in funding and services left in the wake of these shifts. Some of the most salient insights from that discussion appear below.

Key takeaways

Build resilience through financial contingencies and diversified resources. Leaders are strengthening their ability to navigate uncertainty by planning for multiple scenarios and expanding the range of resources that sustain their work. Diversified funding creates the flexibility organizations need to adapt while continuing to serve communities.

Utilize partnerships as investments in long-term capacity. Nonprofit leaders and funders emphasize the power of trust-based philanthropy and capacity-building investments. Partnerships rooted in flexibility, shared learning, and multi-year support enable organizations to strengthen their operations while responding more effectively to shifting contexts.

Anchor innovation in a clear value proposition. In a disruptive environment where resources are constrained and expectations continue to rise, organizations are sharpening their understanding of the value they deliver. Clarity around distinct roles, interventions, and offerings, enables the sector’s most impactful ideas to emerge through creative adaptation.

Listen closely to key constituents through ongoing discovery. Resilient organizations are deeply attuned to the needs of the people and partners who shape their work. By continuously engaging communities, participants, funders, and collaborators through conversation, feedback, and observation, organizations can ensure that programs remain aligned with evolving needs.

Leverage storytelling to connect mission with impact. Storytelling is a powerful tool for navigating complexity while keeping organizations grounded in the purpose of their work. By translating outcomes into compelling narratives, nonprofits clarify the role of their programs, strengthen their relevance, and communicate both the urgency of today’s challenges and the progress being made.

Create shared infrastructure that strengthens the ecosystem. Rather than working in isolation, organizations should explore ways to pool resources, knowledge, and operational capacity across partnerships. Shared infrastructure allows nonprofits to scale impact and reduce duplication across the sector.

Strengthen the ecosystem through collective resilience. In times of uncertainty, nonprofit leadership relies on networks of support that extend across organizations, funders, and communities to enable progress toward shared goals. The strength to navigate disruption grows from shared responsibility, trusted partnerships, and the belief that the work only moves forward together.

Five Minutes with… IBM’s Sara Link

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

As artificial intelligence reshapes how institutions operate, many nonprofits and public-sector leaders are grappling with a pressing question: How can AI be deployed responsibly and equitably in service of the public good? 

At IBM, that question isn’t theoretical — it’s central to how the company designs, governs, and advances its AI strategy across sectors. In a new resource developed in collaboration with NationSwell, Responsible Use of AI for Social Impact, IBM outlines a practical roadmap for responsible AI adoption that moves beyond high-level principles and into actionable guidance for organizations navigating capacity constraints, ethical considerations, and rapidly evolving technology. The report emphasizes AI literacy; governance as an enabler instead of a blocker; and a clear focus on augmenting, rather than replacing, human capability. 

For this installment of Five Minutes with…., NationSwell spoke with Sara Link — IBM’s Global Head of Employee Impact — about what it takes to operationalize trustworthy AI at scale and why government and social sector leaders must be equipped not just with tools, but with the systems and confidence to use them well.

We asked Sara how IBM is reframing responsible AI from a compliance exercise into a performance advantage, what meaningful AI literacy actually looks like inside an organization, and what wild success for ethical AI adoption could look like five years from now. 

Here’s what she had to say:

NationSwell: What do you see as most distinctive about IBM’s approach to responsible AI, particularly for nonprofits and social impact organizations that face capacity constraints?

Sara Link, Global Head of Impact at IBM: It’s encouraging to see so many responsible AI principles circulating right now; that level of focus and intentionality is important. At IBM, our approach centers on making AI practical, understandable, and genuinely useful in everyday work. Our belief is that AI should help people do their jobs better — not replace them, overwhelm them, or create confusion.

One of the key insights in the report is that responsible AI has to be realistic for organizations with limited time, staff, and capacity. Nonprofits don’t have extra resources or margin for error, and in many cases they don’t have deep technical expertise in-house. So responsible AI can’t just live in a policy document — it has to be built in a way that reflects those constraints. That means designing tools and governance structures that are usable, accessible, and practical from the start, so organizations can adopt them confidently and integrate them into their daily work.

NationSwell: Augmenting rather than replacing human capability is central to IBM’s view of AI. Can you share an example of what that looks like in practice, either at IBM or with partners?

Link, IBM: In practice, we think about AI as something that helps bring work to life — whether that’s surfacing information, spotting patterns, or saving time on repetitive tasks. But at the end of the day, people still make the final decisions, especially when judgment, fairness, or context matter.

At IBM, for example, internal tools like AskHR or AskCSR help employees find answers more quickly and efficiently. They streamline the process, but they don’t replace accountability. People are still responsible for what happens next. The goal is to enable better, more informed decisions — not to obscure or complicate them.

NationSwell: The report emphasizes foundational AI literacy. What does “good” AI literacy look like inside an organization, and how does that translate into better outcomes?

Link, IBM: Good AI literacy means people aren’t afraid of the tools, but they also don’t blindly trust them. It shows up when leaders and staff understand what AI can support and where human judgment still needs to step in.

You can hear it in the kinds of questions people feel comfortable asking: Does this actually make sense? Should we double-check this before acting on it? For example, in a nonprofit using AI to screen applications or triage services, literacy shows up when staff know how to review AI recommendations, recognize when something doesn’t feel right, and understand that the final decision rests with them.

That kind of literacy leads to better mission outcomes. It reduces errors, helps guard against bias, and builds trust with the communities being served rather than simply automating decisions without oversight.

NationSwell: How does the report reframe responsible AI governance as an enabler rather than a blocker? What is one practical first step an organization can take?

Link, IBM: When you lay out clear rules, it actually becomes easier to move forward. Clarity helps people understand what’s acceptable and what’s not. Without that clarity, uncertainty can cause hesitation or lead organizations to avoid using AI altogether. One of the strongest findings in the report is that governance doesn’t slow adoption; it accelerates it by removing ambiguity.

A practical first step is to build a simple pause point into an existing workflow — a moment where a human reviews and signs off before an AI-driven decision affects someone. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be as straightforward as asking: Does this outcome make sense? Would I be comfortable explaining this decision to the person it impacts?

Over time, those small, repeatable checks turn responsible AI from a written policy into a daily habit. And that’s what enables organizations to scale AI safely and confidently.

NationSwell: If you could change one thing about how funders currently approach AI in the social sector, what would it be?

Link, IBM: First, it’s critical for funders to recognize the importance of investing in organizational capacity; that’s the foundation. I would encourage funders to focus not just on funding AI tools, but on supporting people’s ability to use AI well over time.

Investing in technology alone doesn’t create impact if organizations aren’t prepared to work with it. Right now, many nonprofits are expected to figure this out on their own. They may receive funding to pilot AI, but not necessarily the support for training, governance, or long-term learning that makes those tools effective and safe.

Through IBM’s AI for Impact program, which we launched in late 2024, we’ve brought nonprofits together to share how they’re using AI, what questions they have, and where they see opportunity. A recurring theme has been the need for funding that supports both the right tools and the training required to use them responsibly. And research from the IBM Institute for Business Value shows that skills are evolving rapidly — 57% of executives surveyed expect today’s skills to become outdated by 2030. That pressure is even more acute in the social sector, where resources are already stretched.

The funders making the biggest difference are supporting AI readiness, not just adoption — investing in training, shared standards, and giving teams time to learn and adapt, not just deliver. I’d also encourage funders to make their grantees aware of programs like AI for Impact. Many of these resources are free and can help organizations and their leaders build the knowledge and confidence they need to prepare for what’s ahead.

NationSwell: If responsible AI adoption truly takes root, what might wild success look like for the sector five years from now?

Link, IBM: The vision of success, to me, is that AI makes work easier and fairer — not more stressful or confusing. If we can eliminate that sense of overwhelm and instead empower people to use their skills more fully, that would be a meaningful outcome.

In that future, people would understand the tools they’re using and feel confident explaining the decisions those tools inform. AI would help nonprofits do more good without eroding trust or weakening human connection. Most importantly, technology would support organizations in serving communities better — not get in the way.

That’s what wild success looks like: better outcomes for communities, more efficient pathways to get there, and trust and connection preserved throughout the process.

NationSwell: What have you personally learned or found inspiring as you’ve helped lead this work around AI? How has this journey informed your broader leadership in the corporate impact space?

Link, IBM: For a long time, I’ve focused on capacity building for nonprofits and on how the corporate sector and funders can partner more closely with them, providing the right level of support so they can better serve their communities.

What’s been most inspiring lately is the openness I’ve seen when nonprofits come together — the willingness to share ideas, build relationships, and solve challenges collaboratively. There’s a real energy in the room when leaders from across sectors are learning from one another and exploring what’s possible.

I saw that firsthand at a recent conference after speaking on this topic: A healthcare employee approached me and shared that she and her colleagues had been experimenting with AI tools to solve internal challenges, and they were eager to bring leadership into the conversation to explore the potential more formally. She ended up connecting with another healthcare system that was further along, helping to broker a conversation between them.

That kind of openness — being curious about what’s out there and willing to imagine what could be possible — is what excites me most. It’s that spirit of shared learning and forward momentum that will ultimately drive meaningful change.

NationSwell: Is there anything else from the report — or from your leadership perspective — that you’d like to share?

Link, IBM: As someone who doesn’t necessarily have an engineering or a technical background, what’s been especially inspiring to me is realizing that you don’t need deep technical expertise to ask the right questions or to begin this journey of continuous learning. You don’t have to be an engineer to engage meaningfully with AI.

Personally, this experience has shown me how much further we can take our work by building our skills, staying curious, and asking thoughtful questions. When we approach AI as a tool for strengthening connections and building stronger partnerships — rather than something intimidating or purely technical — it becomes incredibly energizing. That mindset has been one of the most exciting parts of this journey for me.

What’s Ahead for Social Impact in 2026? 

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

The year ahead will challenge social impact leaders to stay focused, adaptive, and bold. Political volatility, economic uncertainty, and accelerating technological change will continue to reshape the landscape for companies, philanthropies, and nonprofits alike. To lead effectively, it’s essential to cut through the noise and anchor in a shared understanding of the conditions we’re operating within – the challenges, the opportunities, and the questions we can’t yet answer.

On January 27, NationSwell hosted a group of cross-sector leaders for a candid, forward-looking conversation on what’s ahead for social impact in 2026. Some of the insights that surfaced appear below:

Key takeaways

Continue pushing social impact from brand reputation to risk mitigation and core business strategy. Social impact is increasingly viewed as critical to managing risk and maintaining an organization’s authority to operate. Being “nice to have” is no longer sufficient; impact must be embedded in how the business functions locally and globally.

Build credibility through proximity and transparency. Trust erodes when there is a gap between executive narratives and the lived experiences of frontline workers and communities. Leaders should ground strategy and communications in real feedback from employees and local partners.

Establish clear mechanisms to collect and act on feedback. Organizations need structured ways to gather input from employees, partners, and communities, including voices that are critical or in disagreement. These mechanisms help leaders understand issues early and inform how decisions are escalated and addressed.

Question claims of “doing the work quietly.” Shifts in language, disclosures, or visibility are often described as cosmetic, but closer examination may reveal real erosion in effort or investment. Leaders should pressure-test whether reduced visibility aligns with sustained action and outcomes.

Acknowledge and plan for multiple timelines. Leaders are considering near-term pressures alongside five- to ten-year horizons and longer-term systemic change. Holding these timelines simultaneously is shaping how funders, nonprofits, and institutions think about strategy.

Increase focus on bridge-building, pluralism, and social connection. Many organizations are moving from equity programs alone toward strategies that emphasize connection, dialogue, and social cohesion. These approaches are becoming more prominent across corporate and nonprofit impact work.

Track the increased focus on the human side of AI and emerging technologies. Discussions about AI are increasingly focused on agency, mental health, well-being, and inequality. Leaders are examining how access to AI may widen gaps in power, choice, and opportunity.

Recognize that data alone is insufficient to drive change. Data can be interpreted or manipulated in ways that obscure true impact. Individual stories and lived experiences are increasingly important for moving hearts and minds and communicating impact.

Address burnout among social impact leaders. Leaders across the social impact field are experiencing significant burnout. There is growing concern about losing an entire layer of experienced leaders if organizations focus only on programs and not on supporting the people leading the work.