Andrea Wood
ACCP President & CEO
Last week, ACCP released its 7th Annual CSR Insights Report, revealing the critical trends and priorities shaping the field. Done in partnership with YourCause from Blackbaud, the report draws on responses from 120 companies that collectively represent ~ $1 billion in community investment. The report covers everything from budgets to AI adoption to the evolving policy landscape. I encourage every member to unpack the findings, and to share them with their teams.
You can get started here with five meaningful data points that define the state of our field, and the opportunities ahead. And because ACCP is always thinking focused on what you need, I’ve also included some tools to help you take action.
1. Visibility has arrived. Capacity has not.
83 percent of practitioners report increased visibility within their companies, up from 62 percent last year. Burnout jumped from 39 to 64 percent, the highest figure in the history of this survey.
These two data points need to be examined together. Our field has spent years securing a seat at the table, and the data show progress, with more C-suite exposure, deeper integration with HR, Legal, and ESG, and more responsibility than ever. That’s a win that we should be proud of. However, the burnout figure tells us what this win costs, with headcount remaining flat at 72 percent of companies while portfolios and responsibilities expanded.
My message to business leaders is to make sure their heightened scrutiny of their social impact teams includes a fair assessment of the resources required to maintain robust, multi-stakeholder programs. Meanwhile, I would remind practitioners that a burnout number this high is a structural signal, worthy of a direct conversation with leadership, and the case for capacity may be easier with leadership paying closer attention.
2. The measurement bar is riding faster than our confidence.
66 percent of practitioners face increased demand to measure impact, a three-year high. 63 percent face increased demand to make the formal business case. But only 13 percent say they’re “very confident” in their ability to do it.
We are being held to a higher evidentiary standard than we are currently equipped to meet. I see that gap as the single most important professional development priority in our field right now. Measurement fluency has become a core competency for corporate social impact leaders, on par with program design and partnership management, because it determines whether budgets hold and strategies survive leadership transitions.
If you count yourself among the “slightly confident,” you are in the majority, and that is exactly why this is the skill to invest in this year. ACCP’s Making the Case for Corporate Social Impact toolkit is built for precisely this assignment. I urge practitioners to take advantage of it.
3. AI adoption is nearly universal, but strategic use of AI is still in its early stages.
93 percent of teams now use AI in some capacity, up from 53 percent just two years ago. Yet strategic, high-value applications are rare: 29 percent use AI for grant report analysis and only 13 percent for grantee review support.
Most teams are using AI to more efficiently do what they already did manually, primarily communications and productivity work. That’s a reasonable first chapter, but the next step matters even more. Employing AI for strategic analysis, benchmarking, and measurement is where AI can help close the confidence gap described above.
Because budgets stayed largely flat this year, efficiency gains are a type of currency that the field should leverage in order to do two important things; 1. Decide how their teams should deploy the full strength of AI. And 2. Participate in the broader corporate AI strategy planning in order to ensure the it evolves in ways that are responsible to the community.
4, Adaptation has kept the work alive. Accountability is what keeps it honest.
Only 13 percent of teams report no change in response to the external environment, down from 53 percent in 2024. 58 percent of teams are reframing how they talk about their work, and inclusion work is increasingly moving into HR and ERG departments.
I want to be direct about how we interpret this next shift. Adapting language and structure to protect programs is a legitimate strategy, and much of what looks like retreat in the headlines is actually redistribution, with the work around DEI often continuing under different names, in different reporting lines. Our members are being pragmatic, and that pragmatism has preserved a great deal of substance.
However, the risk in redistribution is diffusion. When commitments move across functions, accountability can quietly evaporate. Every commitment your company has made should still have an owner, a budget, and a way of tracking progress. I encourage members to hold that standard, whatever vocabulary the moment requires.
As a resource for this, ACCP’s members-only Risk Mitigation Toolkit offers practical guidance for navigating this environment without losing the substance.
5. H.R. 1 deserves a plan, not a wait-and-see.
36 percent of companies report no influence from HR1 on their giving planning, and another 45 percent are unsure or still in discussions.
The new 1 percent floor on the deductibility of corporate charitable contributions has yet to reshape most giving strategies, and I expect that reflects the lag between policy enactment and operational impact more than it reflects the policy’s eventual significance. The companies that have started adapting are making structural moves reclassifying contributions, adjusting timing, and diversifying vehicles.
My encouragement to members is to get ahead of this now. Sit down with your tax and finance partners this quarter and model the scenarios, so that decisions get made on your timeline rather than under pressure.
The through line
One more number worth holding onto: employee engagement budgets were once again the most resilient category in the survey, with 30 percent of companies increasing them and only 12 percent making cuts. Even in a year defined by scrutiny and constraint, companies continue to invest in the connection between their people and their social impact. This suggests that our field’s foundation is solid.
The 2026 data describe a profession that has won the strategic relevance it worked for and is now deciding what to do with it. I believe the answer lies in three commitments:
- Convert visibility into resources, making the capacity case while leadership is watching.
- Convert measurement pressure into measurement fluency, so the field can meet the standard it is being held to.
- Convert adaptation into durable accountability, so the substance of our commitments outlasts the vocabulary shifts of the moment.
ACCP members can access the full report and year-over-year analysis in the member community. I would love to hear how this year’s resonates with you. Find me on LinkedIn and let’s keep talking.
