After a year spent defending their programs and managing a wave of increased scrutiny from all sides, impact leaders can hold one figure above all others. Corporate giving actually rose almost eight points year over year. That was a hard-earned victory, and one to be proud of.
But it has been a complex year for corporate purpose. When Benevity Impact Labs asked corporate impact professionals whether their company made the right decisions on difficult issues since the start of 2025, 88% said yes, and 86% said they felt proud of those choices. When nonprofits were asked the same question, only 30% agreed companies got it right, and just 37% thought companies should feel proud.
The gap between those numbers is stark, but there’s no reason to believe that impact professionals are intentionally at odds with their nonprofit partners. The gap here is simple visibility. As impact professionals worked hard to protect their programs, many nonprofits still felt the impact of a tumultuous year.
Among nonprofits that indicated they took a financial hit from federal funding cuts and tighter corporate compliance rules, 58% reported losing more than 10% of their annual revenue. Among those facing heavier administrative burden because of new compliance and eligibility rules, 23% made staff reductions, and 22% had to cut services.
The good news is the gap is fixable, but the work must begin now. So where do we start? The 2026 State of Corporate Purpose report, as well as the Benevity Nonprofit Perspectives 2026 survey, surfaced three areas where corporate priorities and nonprofit needs are diverging.
Companies Are Asking for Stories, Not Funding Storytellers
Companies now say reputation and trust is their number one motivator for investing in corporate purpose programs. As a result, companies shifted their budgets. In a ranking of areas where companies are increasing budget, communications and storytelling ranked ninth in 2024, jumped into the top four in 2025 and landed in second place for 2026.
That investment is buying real capability. It is also generating work that someone else absorbs. Nonprofits report increased demand for custom impact metrics (42%) and a higher volume of custom storytelling requests (44%). To keep up, 48% rely on staff working overtime or unpaid hours, and 49% say donors rarely or never fund the associated effort.
What to do:
- Ask nonprofits for what they already produce. When Benevity Impact Labs asked nonprofits to select their preferred solution to their administrative strain most, accepting readily available reports ranked first, selected by 53%.
- When a custom request is necessary, pay for it. Among the same set of preferred solutions, direct payment for customized reporting is favored by 31% of nonprofits.
- Audit your reporting asks once a year. For each custom piece of information you request, name the decision it informs. If it doesn’t fundamentally change your evaluation, cut it.
Companies Believe in AI, Nonprofits Are Looking Elsewhere
Belief in AI among purpose professionals is close to universal. 82% of companies say AI must be used to increase nonprofit capacity, and 87% expect it to reduce nonprofit burden. But it ends with belief. Only 16% of companies say that AI is a core piece of their own impact strategy.
Of nonprofits surveyed, 72% have never been offered technology capacity or AI tools by a corporate funder, and when the offer does arrive, just 7% say it strongly aligns with what they actually need.
The top barrier to nonprofit AI adoption is not the absence of tools; it is the absence of time (52%) and budget (36%). There is also the question of AI hesitancy. Half of nonprofits are concerned about donors using AI to score grant proposals, and 62% fear AI will miss the human nuance needed to understand their true impact.
What to do:
- Before offering a tool, ask what the organization would do with the cash equivalent. If the answer is better than the tool, send the funding.
- Fund the capacity underneath the tool. Staff time and expertise are the constraint, so implementation support and unrestricted dollars go further than a donated seat count.
- Tell nonprofit partners where AI touches your process, and where a human still decides. Be transparent about how AI is used to evaluate and score grants.
Volunteering Is an HR strategy, Not Necessarily a Community Impact One
Workforce volunteering is surging. Half of companies (50%) are increasing investment in their volunteering programs, and their reasons are clear: employee engagement (96%), culture and connection (91%), community impact (76%) and employee wellbeing (66%).
While the energy and the budgets being put into corporate volunteering are impressive, only 28% of nonprofits say corporate volunteer groups are consistently willing to do the work that most matches their pressing needs. Among those hosting corporate teams, 50% say large team-based events deliver little or no long-term capacity, and 41% say corporate volunteer engagements rarely or never lead to meaningful donations or long-term funding partnerships
Nonprofits have told us what would change the math. Paid volunteer time off (VTO) is favored by 79%, because the hardest shifts to fill are during the workday, and 78% want financial grants covering the administrative and material cost of hosting corporate events.
What to do:
- Attach a grant to the event that covers the cost of hosting you. Nonprofits are already paying to have you there.
- Reframe paid VTO as workforce skill development, so employees can show up when the need actually exists. Reimagining volunteering as skill development fills pressing needs for both companies and nonprofits.
- Change what you measure. Large firms want volunteering tied to business metrics (80%) and employee development (74%). Add one partner-side measure: did the organization gain durable capacity, and would they host you again?
Bringing Corporate Priorities and Nonprofit Needs Back Together
The eight-point rise in giving is real, and so are the uncomfortable truths about diverging priorities. Companies are investing more in purpose while designing more of the partnership around what the business needs to demonstrate, and nonprofit partners have been absorbing the cost.
None of the considerations above require a new budget line. Accepting the report a nonprofit already produces costs nothing, and attaching a grant to a volunteer event costs less than the event itself. What they require is asking nonprofit partners a question most companies have not been asking, and being willing to hear the answer.
Read the full 2026 State of Corporate Purpose report
This is a guest post from Benevity, an Engage for Good partner.