Every December, the Next Stage team looks back across the year’s retreats, board meetings, listening sessions, late-night conversations, and messy whiteboards. That’s where the real story lives — in the patterns that start to emerge from the lived experiences of leaders trying to navigate an increasingly complex landscape. You can feel when something in the ecosystem shifts, even before the headlines catch up.

2026 won’t be gentle. It will be a year defined by adaptation, creativity, and a reckoning with systems that are stretched thin. Yet I’m encouraged, because our sector has always shown its best instincts when we stop waiting for ease and start building for what’s next.

Here are six trends I believe will shape social good in the coming year:

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 1. Innovation Becomes a Requirement

Innovation is one of those things that tends to thrive when times are tough. When the world of social good feels relatively stable, there may be more financial resources available for testing new approaches, but institutions often lack the urgency and appetite for the change management needed to see them through.

But when the pressure is on, “doing things the way we’ve always done it” stops being an option.

The challenge, of course, is that innovating on the fly can feel risky and chaotic. That’s why the best time to test new methodologies is before the crisis hits, when the stakes are lower and teams have more capacity to experiment.

Still, we’ve seen this sector make some of its most meaningful advancements under duress — most recently during the pandemic, when necessity forced creativity at a scale no one expected. If 2026 continues its current trajectory, we’ll need that spirit again. Innovation isn’t a luxury anymore. It’s infrastructure.

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 2. Rebuilding Trust Will Be Difficult — But Essential

We’ve talked a lot about trust this year, and for good reason. Communities are waking up each morning to a landscape that feels less stable and less safe than it did just a few years ago.

BIPOC residents have watched the progress made under diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts be rolled back — in many cases literally deleted from nonprofit websites. Families in our own city of Charlotte hesitated to leave their homes after recent actions by Customs and Border Protection. The trauma of these moments is real, layered on top of the lingering disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Service providers are carrying that weight. Communities are carrying it.

Rebuilding trust won’t happen through a new program or a sharper tagline. It will take sustained, visible investment in relationships and transparency — at both the organizational and community-wide level. “Who are we?” is a question every community leader should be asking as the new year crests. The answers won’t come quickly, but they matter more than ever.

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 3. AI’s Move From Experiment to Infrastructure

Artificial intelligence is changing the way work gets done, and nonprofits — long understaffed and overstretched — are feeling its impact quickly.

Executives now have something they’ve never had before: a powerful productivity partner sitting on their desktop. A grant application due tomorrow? No problem. Need to untangle an HR issue? AI can surface options in seconds. Administrative teams that have been underwater for years finally have a lever that helps them breathe.

The next frontier is shifting from staff experimenting with AI in isolation to the development of organizational adoption strategies — policies, workflows, expectations, and guardrails.

We predict that 2026 is the year nonprofits begin institutionalizing AI. It will reshape job descriptions, performance expectations, documentation practices, and capacity models across the sector.

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 4. A Deepening of AI's Impact on Social Good Mission Delivery

If AI is transforming nonprofit operations, its effect on mission delivery may be even more profound.

Next Stage works with many organizations focused on workforce development, and the landscape is shifting quickly. For years, STEM training was held up as the ticket to economic mobility — “learn to code” was the refrain. But as developers face layoffs due to AI automation, that assumption is shifting.

Trades educators from carpentry to HVAC repair are positioning their fields as “AI-resistant,” and they’re not wrong. The promise of technology as a universal upward-mobility path needs a fresh look.

Beyond workforce development, AI is reshaping healthcare, human services, climate resilience, and philanthropy. It brings incredible potential, but also new questions about equity, ethics, and long-term opportunity.

We expect 2026 to be the year AI takes center stage in the larger fight for social and economic mobility, and every mission-driven organization will feel its ripple effects.

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5. A Renewed Focus on Individual Philanthropy 

Organizations overly dependent on institutional support — foundations, corporations, or government agencies — are heading into choppy waters.

As the most consequential elements of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act begin to take hold at the end of 2026, federal funding shifts will act as a force multiplier. The domino effect threatens the sustainability of countless programs and institutions.

This is the moment when individual donors step forward. What we call “elective taxation” — individuals voluntarily fueling causes they care about — is poised to become a defining factor in who survives and who struggles.

We’ve talked about this trend throughout the year, and all signs suggest it will accelerate in 2026. Organizations with clear messaging, strong stewardship, and genuine community alignment will be the ones positioned for stability.

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 6. Gen X Steps Up

The times, they are a’changing. As a member of Gen X myself, I’ve long wondered what it would look like when the Baby Boomer generation began handing the torch to us. We’re now seeing it happen.

The oldest Gen Xers turned 60 this year. Many are still in the workforce, at the height of their earning potential, and stepping into leadership roles across sectors. Our hopes for increased philanthropy need them — especially as Boomers shift into more fixed-income mindsets around giving.

But Gen X is not a monolith. If organizations want to engage this cohort effectively, segmentation, persona-building, and the adoption of an acquisition mindset are essential.

This is a year tailor-made for new approaches to brand marketing, with institutions examining who they’re speaking to and why it matters. At Next Stage, we’re gearing up for a big year in 2026 because we believe Gen X will shape the next chapter of social good.

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 What Our Team Is Watching 

One of the advantages of working at Next Stage is that our team views the sector through many different lenses — workforce development, health equity, philanthropy, community engagement, culture-building, and data and evaluation. We are in rooms with people solving very different problems, and we see the through-lines that connect them.

So after reflecting on my own predictions, I asked my colleagues to share the trends they’re watching as we head into 2026. Their insights add important texture to the picture and underscore how interconnected these shifts truly are.

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 7. A Push for Partnerships to Address Public Health Infrastructure Gaps 

—Jalah Blackmon, Director of Impact for Health

One concerning trend I’m watching is the quiet erosion of our public health infrastructure. We’re seeing holes left by job turnover in government agencies, and with that, a real fragility in the systems we rely on. As a new parent, I was alarmed to learn during my child’s early doctor visits that the CDC’s vaccine schedule was temporarily unavailable online. Key datasets and alerts are becoming inconsistent or disappearing altogether, creating a dangerous void that challenges public trust and health equity.


Yet, I’m optimistic. Health-focused nonprofits and community-based organizations are stepping into the gap as temporary librarians and translators of essential information. The increased focus on the social drivers of health and lessons from the pandemic have equipped them to provide trusted, hyper-local outreach. It’s a powerful testament to the sector's agility.


This interim work is crucial, but underscores an urgent call to action. We must come together across sectors to defend and restore a public health system that doesn’t leave anyone behind. Protecting our most vulnerable isn’t just a healthcare issue; it’s a test of our collective commitment to a healthy society.

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8. A Shift in Strategy Horizons 

—Caylin Haldeman, Director of Strategy

Across my work with Next Stage clients and leading internal strategy, one pattern is showing up again and again: the speed at which the world is changing and communities are organizing far outpaces the speed at which institutions and organizations are planning. The three-to-five-year strategic plan — once a reliable anchor — feels increasingly misaligned with a world shaped by policy volatility, funding whiplash, and localized crises that unfold on weeks-, not years-long, timelines. Meanwhile, grassroots groups and informal networks are adapting in near real time, guided by proximity, trust, and an ability to move without bureaucratic drag.

In 2026, I believe the most resilient and impactful organizations will rethink not just what they plan, but how far out they plan. Strategy will need shorter horizons, lighter structures, and stronger feedback loops — designed for calibration, not prediction. Long-term vision still matters. What’s changing is the operating posture required to sustain it: governance models that absorb uncertainty, funder relationships that allow for course correction, and measurement systems that surface signals early rather than reporting outcomes too late.

The organizations that thrive won’t be the ones with the most polished plans. They’ll be the ones that treat strategy as a living practice — and build the muscle to respond as conditions, and communities, change.

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 9. An Increased Need to Meet Donors Where They Are Scroll

—Nora Hines, Marketing Manager

Vertical video content will only become more essential in 2026. With 41% of Gen Z and 24% of Millennials being motivated to support causes based on what appears on their social media, and short-form video content consistently performing better on TikTok and Instagram, social good organizations that fail to prioritize video-first storytelling risk missing out on significant swaths of the younger generations. Posts with images already see 650% more engagement than text-only posts, and video only further amplifies this effect.

And the good news is, you don’t have to have an in-house TikTok expert on your team to pull this off. In 2026, nonprofits can (and should!) tap into their existing community for content creation. Organizations can reshare videos from volunteers on the ground, ask donors to explain why they give, and turn testimonials into Instagram Reels. Successful nonprofits will crowdsource their video content, giving beneficiaries, volunteers, and young supporters simple prompts to create authentic 15-30 second stories about their experiences with the organization. This user-generated approach solves both the expertise and authenticity gaps, as peer-created content resonates far more with younger audiences than polished organizational messaging ever could.

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 10. A Renewed Demand for Authentically Human Visual Designs

—Wendy Orrego, Visual Design Manager

As audiences face information fatigue, fractured attention spans, and growing distrust in institutions, the role of design will shift from decoration to translation, turning complex data, community insights, and impact stories into visuals that people can immediately understand and emotionally connect with.

While AI will continue transforming how creative work gets produced, I predict a strong counter-trend: a renewed demand for authentic, human-centered visuals and storytelling. In a world where almost anything can be generated instantly, audiences will value what feels real — original photography, genuine community representation, and narrative and design choices rooted in lived experience rather than automated templates.

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