What Does a Human-First, AI-Enabled Approach to Fighting Poverty Look Like?
For much of this year, we’ve been focusing with our community on the question: “How do we stay ambitious in the context of crisis and constraint?” With needs rising and budgets falling, AI is opening up new ways to do more with less. Yet AI is not neutral. As with all technologies, it offers opportunities […]
Staying Ambitious with AI: 5 Lessons for Responsible Social Impact
Social impact organisations are under growing pressure. Needs are rising, resources are constrained, and teams are being asked to do more for more people, often with less. In this context, artificial intelligence offers real promise. Used well, AI can help organisations unlock knowledge, reduce administrative burden, improve decision-making and extend support to people and communities. […]
From Engagement to Action: 5 Ways to Activate Internal Stakeholders on Social Impact
In a period of economic uncertainty, geopolitical instability, organisational restructuring and growing regulatory pressure, businesses are facing competing demands. For social impact professionals, this creates a familiar challenge: how to keep social impact visible, credible and actionable when leaders and teams are under pressure. The task is no longer simply to raise awareness or generate […]
Moving Beyond Projects: How Corporate–NGO Partnerships Can Build Systems Collaboration
Corporate–NGO partnerships are entering a new era. The scale and complexity of global crises are increasing, while the resources available to address them are tightening. Poverty, climate disruption, conflict, displacement, debt pressures and rising costs are all placing pressure on communities, companies, NGOs and public institutions at the same time. At the same time, the […]
Unlocking More Impact from Limited Capital: 5 Lessons on Catalytic and Recyclable Finance
Businesses are being asked to deliver more social and environmental impact at a time when many social impact budgets are flat or declining. Teams are expected to support communities, respond to complex global challenges, contribute to sustainability goals and demonstrate measurable outcomes, often without significantly more funding. This pressure is prompting many companies to rethink […]
How the TISFD Framework Supports Businesses and Investors to Manage People-Related Risks and Opportunities
Inequalities remain high and persistent. On a global level, just 10 percent of the world’s population own 75 percent of its wealth, while the poorest 50 percent own 2 percent, according to the World Inequality Report 2026. A third of the workforce worldwide, 1 billion people, earn less than the living wage, according to the […]
Your Mission is Clear. Your Messaging Isn’t
Most social impact brands are good at explaining what they stand for. Fewer are good at reaching the people they need to reach, at a cost the organization can sustain. I run the marketing systems side of a performance marketing agency working with product-driven brands. Commercial work, through and through. But the core question is […]
AI Literacy and Local Humanitarian Leadership in Cameroon
How can education and training play a key role in unlocking AI literacy and opportunities for local humanitarian leaders in Cameroon? “We need to avoid a new digital inequality where only large international organisations benefit from AI transformation, while local actors remain behind due to lack of access, fractional training, or funding.“ – Ulrich Assouah Cameroon […]
When Budgets Tighten, Corporate Innovators Invest More in Social Impact. Here’s Why.
Across the corporate social impact community, the conversation in 2026 keeps coming back to the same anxious question: how do we maintain budgets when the economic and political pressure is threatening to cut them? Teams are being downsized. Targets are being quietly walked back. Many companies have gone silent on commitments they made publicly two […]
Dignity Is a Business Strategy
What 15 years in clinical practice and two years in Haiti taught me about the cost of overlooking the human experience I was 19 years old when I went to Haiti. I spent two years there doing service work, building physical structures, laying infrastructure, and spending a lot of time teaching people how to lead […]
Why Purpose-Driven Leadership Starts With You
We spend years climbing ladders, only to realize they might be leaning against the wrong wall. Leaders who want to do good in the world often skip the hardest step: clarifying their own purpose first. If you want to build an organization equipped to create durable social impact, you have to do the internal design […]
From Resilience to Antifragility: What Nature Can Teach Us About Staying Ambitious in a Time of Constraint
In today’s context of overlapping crises, of climate, conflict, and inequality, alongside tightening resources, social impact practitioners face a stark challenge. How do we remain ambitious when the pressure is increasing and the resources are shrinking? At Business Fights Poverty, we have been exploring this question through a practical lens, working with partners to identify […]
Partnering for Impact: Five Lessons for Organisations Ready to Champion Women Farmers
Inside ofi and GIZ’s model for high-impact, inclusive partnerships This year, as FAO marks the Year of the Woman Farmer, I’ve been reflecting on what partnership looks like when it genuinely moves the needle for women. At ofi, working across markets and value chains every day, one truth is clear: we cannot build resilient, climatesmart, […]
Why Lean Startup Fails Impact Ventures – and What to Do About It
Billions Burned: Part I – The Problem Impact ventures, whether targeting low-income consumers or tackling persistent societal problems like climate change or malnutrition, face a fundamental innovation challenge: the cost of delivering a new solution today exceeds the value it creates. It’s why the market doesn’t already exist. Today’s dominant innovation playbook, Lean Startup, was […]
Supply Chain Resilience Starts with Household Resilience: What Other Sectors can Learn from Cocoa
The stability of global supply chains is shaped by decisions made in individual homes, not just corporate boardrooms. If farmers can’t absorb shocks, neither can the supply chains that depend on them. Agribusiness supply chains face mounting pressures from climate change, price volatility, labour issues and deepening rural poverty. Cocoa is a stark example: 70% […]
Partner with the Business Fights Poverty Institute to Drive Action
What does it take for business to play a meaningful role in tackling today’s biggest global challenges, from living wages and climate transition to responsible AI? A central challenge is becoming clear: while the volume of research and insight is growing, businesses often struggle to translate it into action at the pace required. Evidence is […]
Forced Labour in Supply Chains: A Growing Competitiveness Challenge for the UK
When the landmark lawsuit involving Dyson and allegations of forced labour in global supply chains made headlines, it sparked an important conversation in the UK. Across the world, governments are introducing stronger measures to address forced labour and human rights risks in global supply chains. What might once have been seen as a reputational or […]
The Missing Link in Water Stewardship: Why Gender Equity is Not an Add-On
As pressure on freshwater resources increases, it is time for business to ask not only ‘How much water are we using?’ but also ‘Who bears the cost when we use it and what is our responsibility to them?’ Water is more than a resource. It is a strategic asset that underpins the health of communities, […]
Good Intentions Don’t Transform Supply Chains. Better Design Could.
UN Women’s 2025 Unfinished Business report puts it plainly: the defining challenge for the private sector on gender equality is closing the gap between commitment and actual outcomes. After years of working inside global supply chains and development programmes, we think that gap exists for a very specific reason. It is not a motivation challenge. […]
Together for 2026: Navigating a Shifting Social Impact Landscape
At the start of the year, the Business Fights Poverty community came together for Together for 2026, an online forum designed to take stock of the year ahead and explore how businesses, civil society and practitioners can navigate an increasingly complex and contested social impact landscape. Held on 28 January, the forum created a timely […]