Topic: Leader development and support

Q2 2026 Social Impact Trends

Q2 2026 Social Impact Trends

NationSwell’s quarterly trend spotter provides impact professionals with visibility into the most noteworthy, timely, and material shifts in the field. For Q2 of 2026, our report explores the following five trends:

  1. Leaders wading through a uniquely opaque environment
  2. High number of CEO transitions ushers in new era of heightened expectations
  3. Worker backlash to AI transformation is real, and spreading
  4. Philanthropy is under pressure to evolve faster 
  5. Child and family wellbeing gaining much needed attention, and some traction
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Influence at Work, Part 3: Showcasing impact’s ROI

Posted on by Nick Cericola

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

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

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

Here’s what that requires in practice:

Beef up your analytics capabilities

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

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

Tactics to consider:

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

Commit to the structured study of primary ROI data 

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

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

Tactics to consider:

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

Care deeply about your deck and how you deliver it

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

Tactics to consider:

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

Don’t shy away from clarifying the stakes

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

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

Tactics to consider:

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

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

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

Posted on by Nick Cericola

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

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

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

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Pursue impact solutions that solve business problems

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

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

Tactics to consider:

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

Run your function like a business

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

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

Tactics to consider:

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

Be judicious about your external partnerships

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


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

Tactics to consider:

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

Build your team around business-relevant skills

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

Tactics to consider:

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

Explore sustainable and diversified funding models

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

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

Tactics to consider:

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

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

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

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.

Q1 2026 Social Impact Trends

Q1 2026 Social Impact Trends

TREND REPORT
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NationSwell’s quarterly trend spotter provides impact professionals with visibility into the most noteworthy, timely, and material shifts in the field. For Q1 of 2026, our report explores the following six trends:

  1. Minneapolis ICE raids spark employee activism and minimalist business response
  2. OBBBA precipitating shifts in philanthropy, new corporate approaches
  3. Nonprofit anxiety around operational risks runs deep amidst legal and financial pressure
  4. AI adoption outpacing workforce readiness
  5. ESG notches a legal victory while confronting growing antitrust warnings
  6. Sustainability compliance remains a moving target for companies
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