In a season of giving, smart leaders are giving forward

Year-end giving can be a moment of reflection, but for businesses and philanthropy alike, it should also include looking forward and asking the question, what’s next?

One throughline from this past year is uncertainty. Uncertainty has rewritten how we work, live, and lead. Yet, one thing that still holds true is we share a responsibility to keep systems strong so no one is left behind, especially children.

I’ve seen firsthand how instability isn’t just economic, it’s deeply human. I’ve seen it in a mother whose baby’s survival depended on something as small as a packet of therapeutic food. In that moment, you understand that systems created as large scale solutions change lives.

GO DEEPER ON PURPOSE

Purpose has become one of the most overused words in business, but the leaders who will define what’s next are treating it differently. They’re going deeper.

The smartest changemakers are cutting through tokenistic giving and refocusing on what’s core to their mission. They’re aligning personal and corporate philanthropy not around optics, but around outcomes that truly matter like health, equity, sustainability, and opportunity.

STRENGTHEN WHAT’S STABLE, TO WITHSTAND WHAT’S NOT

If recent years have taught us anything, it’s that the systems we depend on are only as strong as the most vulnerable people within them.

Business leaders understand this intuitively. A 2024 survey showed that 45% of global CEOs expect significant business model disruption within three years. Social trust and resilience are key to future competitiveness. Trusted companies can be worth up to four times more than their competitors and 89% of business leaders identified resilience as a major priority in their organizational strategy.

Put simply, future-proofing your business means building stronger systems that will support future generations. Your future workforce, customers, and investors are today’s children and adolescents. When children thrive, societies stabilize and markets follow.

NOT JUST A NUMBER

When global supply chains break down, it’s not just balance sheets that suffer; the livelihoods of entire communities feel the impact. Too often, those disruptions get reduced to numbers on a page like drops in GDP and productivity losses, but what’s really at stake is livelihoods.

And sometimes the clearest illustration of why stability matters comes down to a single moment.

When I was a new mom, I met a Sudanese mother in a refugee camp in Ethiopia near the Sudan border. The woman was holding her baby, who was severely underweight but just beginning to show signs of alertness. She was feeding her child a small packet of ready-to-use therapeutic food, a peanut-based paste that treats severe acute malnutrition. It’s a simple, scalable solution with life-changing impact.

Malnutrition remains one of the most pressing yet solvable challenges in global health. Addressing it requires the kind of smart, forward-leaning, systems-level innovation UNICEF and its partners are scaling across the world.

MAKE GENEROSITY A YEAR-ROUND STRATEGY

Uncertainty shouldn’t stop you from leading or giving.

Support from the private sector can be pivotal for nonprofits, but the greatest impact requires relationships, not just transactions. It requires companies that cocreate with nonprofits, sharing expertise, networks, and long-term commitment to help unlock lasting and innovative solutions.

WHAT’S NEXT

The future will be shaped by those who act now. Here’s how to do that.

• Invest in stability. Give toward systems that protect children and strengthen communities. These are the same systems your business relies on for a stable workforce, market, and future.

• Collaborate with intention. Align your business and your values. Strategic giving builds trust, reinforces brand purpose, and connects you with the partners and consumers who share it.
• Give forward. Treat generosity as leadership strategy. It’s how you future-proof impact for your company, your community, and the world your business depends on.

As you take a moment of gratitude during this holiday season, give to what’s urgent now and what will define what’s next.

Michele Walsh is executive vice president and chief philanthropy officer of UNICEF USA.  

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