In her role as Chief Impact Officer, Sona leads the Benevity Impact Labs, an incubator and social innovation lab. Sona and her team bring cutting-edge data, research and insights to help organizations and individuals maximize their impact and inclusion efforts, and authentically live their purpose.
Your company is about to publish an impact story. It speaks to your company’s commitment to social impact, how your employees engage in purpose and the outcomes your program has achieved through grants, volunteering and partnerships.
Behind every line of that story is the data. Those are the critical proof points that show how much your program achieved. As we all know (because the work takes months and months of preparation), the data doesn’t gather itself. So before you publish your next report, maybe ask yourself: how can I ensure that the creation of this report is a shared investment between us and our nonprofit partners?
Recent data from Benevity Impact Labs’ State of Corporate Purpose 2026 report shows companies are investing more than ever in telling their impact story. But that budget increase isn’t matched by investment in the nonprofits who gather the data behind it. At Benevity, we would argue that this is one of the single most important trust decisions a purpose leader can make right now.
A year of pressure reset priorities
Last year put corporate purpose under a whole new level of pressure. The State of Corporate Purpose 2026 report revealed 74% of companies said the political and regulatory environment shaped their strategy, and 55% reported increased scrutiny of their programs.
A year spent justifying and fighting for your programs changes what you invest in, and why. Corporate reputation and trust is now the number one motivator for investing in purpose, named by 91% of companies.
Last year told a story of pressure and resilience, and despite that, we would still say purpose won out. Why? Because giving rose eight points year-over-year. And the budget for talking about it is climbing fast, too.
Good stories need proof
Every year we ask impact leaders where their budgets are growing. Communications and storytelling budgets ranked ninth in 2024, fourth in 2025, and second this past year. Trust is what companies are investing in, and storytelling is how they are building it. But a great story only builds trust when evidence backs it up, and the data shows the majority of companies are asking nonprofits to produce that evidence for free.
Consider the imbalance. Among large corporate firms, 59% say they are increasing their communications and storytelling budgets, while just 26% are increasing their budgets for strategic grants and partnerships. Meanwhile, the requests keep climbing: 44% of nonprofits report that they are getting more custom storytelling requests than they used to, and 42% say that they are seeing more requests for custom metrics.
When you dig further, the picture gets a little bleaker. Forty-eight percent of nonprofits handle the extra reporting workload through unpaid staff overtime, and 49% say companies rarely or never fund the effort. Almost no one is easing off with only 10% of companies expecting to ask nonprofits for less reporting this year.
This data made me uncomfortable the first time I saw it. Despite everyone’s good intentions, as pressure rose, the cost is landing on our nonprofit partners. So how do we close this gap?
Where you can start
Make partner reports the default: Accept impact reports in the format partners already use. It removes custom work, and it costs you nothing. When a custom request is truly necessary, attach the associated funding required to generate it. If you prefer, you can go with standardized reporting, which allows you to compare data across your investments with measurement experts such as Impact Genome or True Impact.
Consider co-funding the storytelling: If it builds trust, ask your brand and marketing partners to help fund the nonprofits doing the heavy lifting.
Then ask your team:
- How many custom reporting formats did we ask partners for last year?
- How many reports had funding attached?
- What would it cost to cover the cost of custom reporting?
Trust is your business case
The stories you tell build reputation and trust, and telling great stories takes investment. Today, your nonprofit partners are generating the outcomes, and shouldering the cost of proving it. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. The purpose playbook is being re-written. Now’s the chance to start a new chapter, one that invests in storytellers, not just stories.
Read the full State of Corporate Purpose 2026 report from Benevity Impact Labs.