After a rough year, what will will corporate impact and sustainability look like in 2026?

In the world of social impact and sustainability, 2025’s word of the year could have been “headwinds.” It became a euphemism for everything from political pressure and regulatory changes to economic uncertainty, AI disruption, and social upheaval. But in many ways, “headwinds” is an understatement for what impact and sustainability leaders across the corporate and nonprofit sectors navigated in a year of budget cuts and evolving risk factors. For much of the past year , leaders across the corporate and nonprofit sectors have been recalibrating approaches to advancing their missions against these trends. In 2026, we’ll start to see those new approaches in action. Based on interviews with dozens of experts, here are five big shifts to pay attention to over the next year in social impact and sustainability. 1: Evolving the sustainability narrative One of the most visible shifts to note is that social impact and sustainability are becoming much less, well, visible. For years, companies have been making bold commitments, setting lofty goals, and engaging in the kind of storytelling—but not always following through, a trend that finally led Merriam-Webster to add “greenwashing” to its dictionary in 2022. 2025 felt like a correction, as companies reacting to a changing landscape of risk and political attention ushered in a period of “ greenhushing ,” where companies were reluctant to talk about their sustainability initiatives. As Andrew Winston of Winston Eco-Strategies puts it, “The biggest issue in the U.S. is the very strong desire of leadership teams to keep their heads down and say nearly nothing about sustainability. The work seems to be mostly continuing, but it’s certainly not great for morale or moving at speed and scale if your bosses are telling you to hide out.” That’s why 2026 is likely to bring another narrative correction that grounds sustainability storytelling in business performance and operational rigor—which has always been where sustainability is heading. “The best companies aren’t just making pledges, they’re building and executing solutions that scale, measure, and return value,“ says Dave Stangis at Apollo. “Seeing capital, innovation, and outcomes align always gives me optimism.” 2: Adopting a new leadership mindset An organization laser-focused on delivering results also requires a laser focus from its leaders. As Alison Taylor of Ethical Systems notes, the rapid-fire disruption of 2025 made this focus hard to find: “Many of sustainability’s core assumptions no longer apply, and there is a need for a reframe of the profession. The practitioners I talk to are struggling with terminology, legal risk, and threats to their roles. While it is true that much great work is going on behind the scenes, it is difficult for most leaders I speak to to maintain organizational momentum, simply because there is so much fire fighting to do.” 2026 will bring new fires to fight, but the demand for results and focus will give rise to a new mindset for leaders. Kristen Titus of the Titus Group predicts that leaders will emerge from this period of uncertainty and paralysis with a...

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