Resource Type: Trend reports

Looking Ahead: 2024

Looking Ahead: 2024

TREND REPORT
Posted on
Download

When NationSwell surveyed corporate social impact and sustainability executives in July 2023, nearly 7 out of 10 said they’re anticipating a challenging year in 2024. Since then, we’ve witnessed an intensifying wave of anti-DEIB activism, read the dire warnings conveyed in the UNFCCC’s first Global Stocktake, and felt the surge of collective anxiety around the coming elections in the U.S. and around the world. At the same time, powerful examples of collective action, new and transformational technologies, and the continued resolve of purpose-driven leaders demand our attention and urge optimism into the picture.

At NationSwell, we too are resolved. We are resolved to support our membership community, partners, and concerned public in advancing progress on the issues that we believe matter most in the year ahead.

To ground our collective efforts, we have prepared this 2024 look ahead with four goals in mind:

  • To orient organizations, leaders, and their teams to the issues and trends that we see mattering most in 2024, supported by detailed evidence
  • To provide line of sight into the predictions and forecasts of experts steeped in those issues
  • To support scenario planning around a range of inevitabilities and possibilities
  • To voice our calls to action for the field and for ourselves

Our look ahead focuses on 6 major topics that NationSwell anticipates being central to the work of purpose-driven leaders and organizations in 2024:

  • Artificial intelligence
  • Climate progress
  • Democracy and civic engagement
  • Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging (DEIB) and economic opportunity
  • The employee-employer compact
  • The social impact and sustainability profession
Share this report
Recommended Features

The state of play: Corporate sustainability

The state of play: Corporate sustainability

As climate change creates a growing risk to companies’ financial stability, sustainability programs offer a competitive advantage for businesses across size and sector. Those who are ahead of the curve are making bold commitments, deepening expertise, collaborating effectively, and greening their workforces. The most resolute business leaders will continue to push forward their strategies against political backlash. For them, it is a moment of opportunity not hesitancy. 

In this report, we help leaders get up to speed and check their progress against the latest macro trends, policy and regulatory developments (U.S. and E.U.), and pace-setting organizations.

The trends: 

  • Corporate climate commitments and leadership accountability are on the rise. But the rate of progress remains well behind what’s needed to achieve 2050 goals. 
  • Political and legislative activity are creating cross-pressures on sustainability work. But stakeholder activism remains a strong tailwind. 
  • New innovations and collaborations reflect a growing supply chain playbook. Companies know that Scope 3 impact cannot be ignored. 
  • Jobs–both existing and new–are becoming greener. Employers and workers are both driving the transition. 
  • Water and biodiversity are making big moves toward the center of corporate interest. Pending emissions disclosure rules remain top of mind.
Share this report
Recommended Features

The state of play: DEIB

The state of play: DEIB

Organizations have taken a larger interest in the practice of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging since COVID-19, the murder of George Floyd, and other pivotal events brought long-entrenched societal inequities into the spotlight. While their arc of progress is uneven, the simple fact remains: injustice occurs as prominently in workplaces as anywhere else, affording companies the opportunity – perhaps the responsibility – to model solutions that could ultimately yield a wider societal benefit. This trend report describes five key trends for DEIB in 2022:

The trends: 

  • With high expectations from current and prospective employees, companies are revamping recruitment to meet diversity goals; they are struggling to employ complete strategies.
  • To advance equity and inclusion, companies are leaning into stronger benefits, policy updates, and employee resource groups; data on efficacy is scarce, but makes clear that the work is just beginning.
  • Employee perspectives on DEIB effectiveness vary in ways that are unsurprising; company leadership has a responsibility for more open and reciprocal communications to better respond to these differences.
  • Reporting and disclosures around DEIB are improving, but the data is inconsistent and incomplete.
  • DEIB executives are turning over at an increasingly high rate; lack of resourcing, insufficient company-wide engagement, and burnout are major contributors.
Share this report
Recommended Features

The state of play: U.S. philanthropy

The state of play: U.S. philanthropy

Philanthropy provides risk-tolerant capital in a way that government and business cannot. It is a necessary ingredient to solving the world’s social and environmental problems. A new wave of giving that can propel projects forward with equity and justice at the fore is increasingly contingent on funders not only donating their financial resources but also embedding the values of trust-based approaches into their overall strategy. This trend report describes five key trends for U.S. philanthropy in 2022:

The trends: 

  • Funders have increased their giving over the last two years, sometimes significantly, but growth in nominal giving hides the fact that funders are donating less of what they earn
  • Trust-based philanthropy found its foothold in the midst of crisis; today, funders are sustaining and evolving those principles
  • Funders are doing more to prioritize racial and social justice in their giving, yet BIPOC voices remain too marginalized in decision-making 
  • Funders are realizing philanthropy’s potential to support climate interventions, but their actual investments are incommensurate to the challenge
  • Collaborative approaches are gaining momentum and proving their impact, even among institutional funders; collective investing models adopt a power sharing approach, taking learnings from individual giving as well as trust- and place-based initiatives
Share this report
Recommended Features

The state of play: Corporate civic engagement

The state of play: Corporate civic engagement

Corporate civic engagement describes how companies plan for, respond to, and participate in political, social, and cultural activities that are important to their employees, customers, communities, and other stakeholders. Unlike traditional government relations and public affairs efforts, which often relate narrowly to core business interests, corporate civic engagement often denotes a clear, public stance on broader social issues and values.

2020 sparked increased corporate civic engagement, with companies taking a more vocal stance on a larger portfolio of political and social issues than seen before. Today, those same companies are grappling with the reality of serving a broad spectrum of employees, consumers, and other stakeholders in a politically fraught environment. The current moment – and those on the horizon – will tell us a lot about the social role of the corporation moving forward. This trend report describes five key trends for corporate civic engagement in 2022:

The trends: 

  • Since 2020, more customers than ever want companies to take a stance on social and political issues, but they may not be aligned on what that stance should be.
  • Employees are increasingly willing to leave companies and mobilize their collective strength to force change, and they’re not letting CEOs get away with non-public action.
  • Politicians and companies are confronting one another in uncharted territory; the risk calculus for corporate leaders is getting scrambled as a result.
  • Media and third party watchdogs are bringing more transparency to the gap between commitments and actions; they’re revealing that companies still have a ways to go.
  • Partnerships and playbooks are gaining momentum to address political, consumer, and employee challenges; though there remains no one-size-fits-all strategy.
Share this report
Recommended Features

The state of play: ESG

The state of play: ESG

ESG describes an array of non-financial factors that investors, regulators, and other stakeholders use to evaluate the performance of companies. The growing popularity of ESG-motivated investing is contributing to more transparent and rigorous corporate reporting practices as well as operational changes aligned with improved social and environmental impact. ESG factors are increasingly understood as interconnected with–rather than distinct from–the financial performance and value of a company.

ESG can retain the attention it has garnered over the past few years if companies and investors better match their public commitments with operational rigor. Skeptics will undoubtedly remain, but ESG can become a powerful force for change if stakeholders make it so. This trend report describes five key trends for ESG in 2022:

The trends: 

  • Social issues are at once more fragmented and more important to the general public than climate concerns; as companies concentrate their climate commitments around carbon neutrality and net zero, the public is likely to become even less forgiving of those that perform poorly on social factors.
  • Dozens of ESG reporting frameworks and regulatory standards exist in jurisdictions around the globe; efforts are underway to consolidate and simplify those frameworks for the sake of consistent and universal reporting requirements.
  • Investors and companies are seeking deeper expertise and greater accountability related to ESG on their management teams, staff, and boards; the marketplace for that talent is not yet well established. Soon, that will change.
  • More retail investors, small funds, and large institutional investors are embracing an activist posture related to ESG and expressing growing skepticism that companies will make good on their commitments; the efficacy of ESG-motivated investor activism is on the rise, too.
  • Until recently, private markets have taken a back seat to public markets in ESG investing; now, private equity investors are playing a major role in the next chapter of the ESG story.
Share this report
Recommended Features