By: Mollye Rhea
Welcome to For Momentum’s annual look ahead at the trends shaping cause partnerships. 2025 promises to be a dynamic year for our sector, with a new administration in Washington, a rapidly evolving corporate giving landscape, and the explosive growth of AI. Navigating this complex terrain will require adaptability and foresight. So, let’s peer into the future together as we explore the key trends that partnership professionals need to know to build even stronger collaborations in the year to come.
Trend 1: Companies shift toward quiet giving and local impact efforts to avoid public backlash
Over the next year, we will see a shift in corporate philanthropy toward quiet giving—donating with less focus on public attention. This trend is a by-product of scrutiny some companies have faced for their public DEI commitments. To avoid backlash, companies are prioritizing partnerships that align with their core mission and values, focusing on tangible impacts to local communities where they operate.
Key Points
- Shift to Quiet Giving: Companies are moving away from highly publicized cause marketing campaigns due to increased scrutiny and potential for backlash.
- Balancing Stakeholder Demands: Companies must balance the desires of values-based consumers who want to see social impact with shareholder concerns about potential risks to the bottom line.
- Focus on Local Impact: 55% of CSR leaders ranked providing support to local communities as the most valuable benefit, which means partnerships must relate to the communities where the companies operate.
- Importance of Alignment: Partnerships must align closely with the company’s core mission and values.
- Key data: 94% of Americans reported being worried about the growing division and lack of unity in America. The good news is that 45% believe nonprofits are helping to make things better.
Social impact partnership examples:
- The Target Circle Community giving program
- The Farmlink Project and Chipotle allow customers to donate 10lbs of unsold produce in their app
- A National Pizza Month partnership between 4H and Casey’s allows customers to donate in-store to help 4H clubs in their local community
Takeaway
While the approach to philanthropy is changing, the commitment to social impact is not going away. Cause partnerships will continue to be important in 2025, but with a greater focus on quiet giving strategies and local impact.
Trend 2: Brands consolidate partnerships under umbrella branding
Companies are looking to take more control over their brand identity by managing their philanthropic strategy in-house under their own campaign branding. Companies are mapping out unique mission space areas that resonate with their employees, customers and brand, , then seeking out nonprofits that closely align.
Key Points
- A clear purpose drives results: Many research reports over the last four years have shown that a purpose-centered organizational strategy inspires a stronger sense of shared purpose among employees and stronger employee commitment. Purpose clarity, a clear company vision mission and values, was highly predictive of financial performance. In fact, purpose clarity translated into a 4% uptick in return on assets and a 7% increase in annual returns.
- Companies still need nonprofit brand lift: Despite companies taking back their brand marketing, there’s still room for active engagement in nonprofit-structured cause marketing campaigns. Companies continue to need access to the nonprofit’s brand, storytelling and community impact outcomes.
- Focus on brand goals: Nonprofits must continually communicate about brand goals to ensure their partnerships are meeting sales, awareness and employee engagement targets.
Social impact partnership examples:
- Macy’s Mission Every One is a business strategy embedded in creating a more equitable and sustainable future. In 2025, $5B of the funding will go to support aligned partners, products and programs. National cause partners; include Big Brother Big Sisters of America; Girls, Inc. and the Trevor Project; which strategically align with Macy’s social purpose platform to empower youth to create a brighter future.
PetSmart Charities partners with Feeding America, Meals on Wheels and the American Red Cross to provide critical funding to programs that help keep families and their pets together during challenging times. Their mission is to make veterinary care more accessible, reduce food insecurity and offer disaster relief to ensure pets remain with their families when they need it most.
Takeaway
There is a higher expectation of the nonprofit to become a valued partner delivering strong ROI related to social outcomes and business strategy. Companies are shifting to partners that align directly to their desired impact.
Trend 3: Nonprofits will embrace AI and new technology to improve partnerships
In 2024, AI took the world by storm. While the technology has been developing for years, the release of ChatGPT and Gemini fast-tracked access for the average person. This rapid change will significantly impact how work gets done, including cause partnership work. Accenture estimates that in the coming years, up to 40% of the time people spend working could be assisted by AI that understands language and can converse with its users.
While 58% of nonprofits report some of their staff are using generative AI at work, two in five organizations report no use of these tools. This means there are still many organizations who can put AI tools to work for them. Below are a few ways we predict nonprofits will incorporate AI in 2025 to make their partnership work more efficiently and a few cautions to consider before using it.
Key Points
- Engaging Audiences : AI can help corporate and nonprofit partnerships boost effectiveness by segmenting donor or customer data and quickly analyzing sentiment about their brands or partnership.
- Tech Partnerships: Nonprofits can benefit greatly from partnering with tech companies who are ahead of the curve in using AI. Partnerships can help nonprofits improve cybersecurity, increase donations and automate routine tasks to free up staff time.
- Data Privacy: It’s crucial to develop policies on using proprietary data in AI models both internally and externally with your partners. If you haven’t written your policies yet, begin developing these guidelines for your organization on how and when you can use your information in AI models. Everyone must be cautious about putting proprietary data AI.
- Ethical Implications: We believe nonprofits can be a key contributor to the conversation on bias in AI algorithms and the importance of ensuring AI is used responsibly and equitably. The more we understand the technology, the more our sector can help shape it.
- Challenges: We caution that donors are leery of trusting AI when it comes to assisting with donations, so consider your use cases carefully.
Social impact partnership examples:
- International Rescue Committee (IRC) uses AI to help process refugees’ claims for asylum, improve learning outcomes and reduce disruptions in learning for children in crisis-affected communities.
- Bellwether Education Partners teamed up with Salesforce to implement a chatbot, that answers common questions in real-time and frees up staff for higher-value tasks.
- The tech startup AssisTech created an AI-powered application that helps people with disabilitiescommunicate more effectively, opening up new possibilities and greater independence.
- The Trevor Project partnered with Google.org to create the first-of-its-kind “Crisis Contact Simulator” that helps train counselors and prepare them to support youth in crisis. Together, they have helped Trevor to triple the number of digital volunteer crisis counselors.
Takeaway
Despite initial hesitancy, nonprofits are increasingly relying on AI to better analyze their donor behavior and engage their audiences more efficiently. We see this increasing across cause partnerships as both companies and nonprofits rely on AI for efficiency. Nonprofits who adopt AI earlier will likely have a competitive edge. .
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