This transcript is produced using transcription software and reviewed for quality. Despite our best efforts, some passages may be incomplete or contain errors due to audio quality or software limitations.
Carol Cone:
I’m Carol Cone, and welcome to Purpose 360, the podcast that unlocks the power of purpose to ignite business and social impact.
For over eight years, Purpose 360’s mission is to provide you with data, trends, insights, and great stories, to enhance and increase the effectiveness of your work, and to give you greater ammunition to integrate across the C-suite. Well, today we’ve got more exciting information and data for you.
Joining me today is Sona Khosla, Chief Impact Officer at Benevity, a global software company that powers corporate giving, volunteering, and grant-making for hundreds of the world’s leading companies. We’re going to discuss Benevity’s new 2026 State of Corporate Purpose report that reveals three very important shifts. First, purpose has survived its pressure test. And despite a year of political scrutiny, wars, economic uncertainty, funding shifts, and amidst the growing narrative of corporate retreat, 78—78!—percent of companies continued their purpose work as before. Second, the era of quiet purpose may just be ending, and I’m thrilled about that. Companies are putting greater emphasis on brand reputation and trust, with communications and storytelling receiving the largest budget increase this year. And third, corporate impact leaders are moving from defense to offense and strategy. And driving that is AI adoption, more skills-based volunteering, a lot of greater collaboration across the enterprise, and just a new infrastructure that you, my colleagues and my listeners, are building for more resilient, business-aligned approach to purpose. That is the major, major shift.
That’s what Sona and I unpack in this episode of Purpose 360. So let’s get started. So welcome to the show, Sona. I am so thrilled. We’ve talked before, but not at this length. So this is gonna be a blast.
Sona Khosla:
I’m really looking forward to it, Carol. You were one of the first people I met when I came into this industry because everyone’s like, do you know Carol Cone? And that was 11 years ago. And so I feel like this is our moment. I’m really excited.
Carol Cone:
Oh, great. Well, this will be the first of many moments. So I know because the work that Benevity does is fantastic. So I always love to start with the backstory of my guests. And what was it like growing up? What was that that began to shape the work that you do today?
Sona Khosla:
Yeah, I have to credit my mother, actually. She was actually a spiritual healer. So, I had a very unorthodox childhood. But because she was deeply spiritual, I ended up being exposed to many, many different types of belief systems, religions. We had an altar in our home, and it had Buddhist gods, it had Hindu gods, it had tobacco and sweetgrass, it had Jesus was in there, she had a Quran.
But it was interesting because when I was in high school and partying on weekends, we did this Sunday morning meditation thing. And so every Sunday morning, my sister, my mom, and I would have to meditate. And so, I remember sitting in front of that altar and looking and thinking, this array of people, or this array of kind of deities, that would give people meaning and purpose, and how different they were, but how they were all an expression of one thing. And my mum used to say, like, everyone, everyone believes in something, but ultimately we all believe in the same thing. It’s just which expression resonates with you. And I really have kind of taken that into purpose. It’s like we all have a purpose.
We crave having something that gives us meaning, that connects us to something bigger, but it’s different for all of us.
Carol Cone:
So let’s just start with Benevity. I’m sure many of our listeners know, but some may not.
Sona Khosla:
Yes, yes. So we are private equity backed. And we are, yes, a global company, but headquartered in Canada. And we offer corporate purpose technology and software for some of the world’s largest enterprises. So we help them run, and really manage and execute their purpose. So whether that is corporate grant making, employee giving and matching and volunteering programs, disaster and crisis relief, what we call employee mobilization, which is helping employees take social action, environmental action, or actually build community around whether that’s employee resource groups or community groups or volunteer champion groups. So really helping build community, belonging, identity around purpose in the corporate setting.
Carol Cone:
That’s wonderful. And talk about the numbers.
Sona Khosla:
We’ve supported more than $36 billion to more than 560,000 unique nonprofits around the world, empowering about 7.7 million change makers who have taken action of some sort. And, I mean, really, we haven’t done this. It’s the corporate clients that we work with who are using our enabling technology to scale this. And the nonprofits who are working closely with them to drive that impact.
But the technology is really been an unlock for a lot of companies to be able to scale this, because as you know, those corporate social responsibility or foundation teams can be quite small. And so having the technology is like having another five, ten people on your team who can do the things to argue.
Carol Cone:
And now with AI, we’ve got a whole bunch more, and we’ll get into AI in a bit. Because you have this huge bird’s-eye, but then ground-up, view. Are there one or two — hard to just narrow it — perspectives, insights that you’ve gained from having that? Again, it’s a data lake of information.
Sona Khosla:
Yeah, I actually led marketing at Benevity when I got there. So I arrived at Benevity in 2015 and I was leading marketing. And at one point I kind of sat back and thought, gosh, we’re sitting on so much data. We have such a rare view into what corporations and employees are doing at scale — we could just — and we can see not just what they think or feel, but what they’re doing.
And that’s really unique. And I remember thinking, this could be used to fuel even more good. And that was actually the genesis of Benevity Impact Labs, which is our social innovation lab, which is what I head up. And so what we started doing was just publishing the research. It was almost like a data-for-good project, Carol. Let’s just liberate all of this data to ideally accelerate impact and inclusion efforts on behalf of corporates, nonprofits, and individuals, and just help them do more and do it faster. It was happening already. Great work was hard, but we just wanted to go faster. We’re like, the world needs more.
So we saw all this data, and we could see how companies were designing their programs, what choices they were making around which nonprofits they supported. And then we could see, organically, which nonprofits employees wanted to support. And then we could see that across geographies, across industries, across roles. We celebrated the fifth anniversary of the lab earlier this year. And we’ve just been working on enriching it more and more and sharing as much as we can.
Carol Cone:
And we’re going to talk about the current report. You surveyed four hundred global organizations, corporate and not-for-profit, across thirteen countries. Were there any major — we’re gonna get into the five major points, but — major differences between the US and outside the US?
Sona Khosla:
So, the reality is the majority of the giving happens in the US. But what we see, of course, I would say last year the big, prominent insight was that US giving — so, donors in the US — started turning their attention towards more domestic issues. So that was really interesting. But, you know, we don’t see people care about the same things across the board. What we find in the UK is there’s a bit more of a fundraising, like a traditional fundraising mentality. You know, in the US it’s a little bit more democratized and employee-driven and employee-influenced.
And then, in certain countries like India, for example, lots of volunteering — that is the way they actually show their giving. So you’ll see cultural nuances and differences, but the other thing — we did an executive CSR report about two years ago that also showed quite a stark difference between the UK and the US and how corporate purpose leaders lead those programs.
Carol Cone:
So when did you start doing this report? What’s the first date? And was there a genesis? Was there, like, we have to do this because of something?
Sona Khosla:
Yeah. So, this year’s report, the 2026 State of Corporate Purpose report, was our sixth report. And, to be very honest, the first one was just kind of what I described earlier. We’d been sitting on all of this data and we felt like there’s so much we wanted to share. And so we just thought, let’s just do it, let’s just start. And it became so big, Carol, which was why it’s like this — corporate purpose.
Carol Cone:
I bet. Whoa. So, every report has a headline. There’s a couple — a headline, a couple subheads — that you’d like to share, and then we’ll get into the details.
Sona Khosla:
Yeah, that sounds great. So, this year I would say there were two really hard-hitting pieces of data. The first was when we started to pull the data, because it’s, again, a combination of our transactional data, but then also this survey of corporate purpose leaders. And the first thing that we noticed was that actually corporate giving rose eight points last year. So we thought, in a very politicized, high-risk environment, it would have gone down. It didn’t. It went up. Also, record-breaking volunteer hours. And that’s not just because Benevity grew last year — we looked at cohorts of clients who’ve been on our platform for many years, and they actually grew their volunteer hours.
The second story that really hit us was that, while purpose work is being maintained from a corporate perspective, there was a lot of change in the nonprofits on the receiving end. So the stat that hit us the hardest was 65% of companies—
Changed the nonprofits or programs that they funded last year.
Carol Cone:
Ouch.
Sona Khosla:
That is huge.
Carol Cone:
Major ouch. Right, right. Did you — why do you think that happened?
Sona Khosla:
Yeah, I think there’s a few reasons. The most obvious one, of course, was in light of executive orders and regulations, organizations were looking to make sure that they remained compliant. The second one, I would say, is the result of changes that started two, three years ago. You know, after the pandemic, there was obviously a major kind of swing towards diversity, equity, inclusion, social justice, equity, and many kind of multi-year commitments were made at that time. Come 2023 or so, things started to change, and some of those multi-year commitments ended.
And so what we saw was a lot of corporate leaders taking a step back and saying, okay, now we’re coming out of this crisis response period — what is going to be our enduring kind of approach to this work? What is — what matters now?
Carol Cone:
So you had five key trends. So I think we’ve talked about purpose gets political, but I want you to mention how many companies — the percentage of companies saying that the environment has influenced. And then I want to get to the second trend, which is a quiet revolution, because it’s not that they’re not doing, it’s how they’re talking. No, I don’t know.
Sona Khosla:
That’s right. So, almost three-quarters — 74% of companies said that today’s political and regulatory environment influenced their purpose strategy in the last year. More than half said that they experienced more scrutiny, and it was those stakeholders that I mentioned earlier. In response, what we saw is that 63% of companies required nonprofits to attest to compliance requirements. So that’s very high, potentially very burdensome, depending on how companies are doing that. And 60% of companies changed their eligibility criteria for their nonprofits. So, definitely downstream impacts from the political and regulatory environment.
Carol Cone:
So let’s talk about what does the quiet period look like, for those really conservative companies who are saying, oh, we’re not talking about it at all.
Sona Khosla:
Yeah, so some of the highlight stats here is that 94% of CEOs really continue to support purpose internally. But 69% percent of companies still changed how they describe their programs externally, and 76% said they became quieter. So there is support at the highest level of the organizations, but the expression in the communications externally change quite a bit. I do think that there was a quiet period, because this work was attracting a lot of scrutiny, and it kind of felt like it was maybe more effort than it was worth, and you would attract the wrong kind of attention. And so we definitely saw this quietness. But what’s interesting is we also see a kind of a leading indicator of what’s going to happen next in the data, which is that—
Communications and storytelling budgets — so, increases in that category — went from being ranked ninth just two years ago, so in twenty twenty-four, to number two in twenty twenty-six.
Carol Cone:
That’s amazing.
Sona Khosla:
They’re increasingly focusing on their storytelling, as a central component — those teams are coming together. I would say we also saw some of the downstream impact of that on nonprofits. So you can’t go out and tell those stories without having those impact stories, right?
Carol Cone:
Of course, we’re going to do this.
Sona Khosla:
And so what we found was that there’s a high, high burden being placed on nonprofits. So only 10% of companies said that they were going to reduce the reporting requirements on nonprofits. And, yeah, half of the nonprofits are saying we’ve got way more reporting requirements. Half of the nonprofits said we’re funding that through unpaid staff volunteer time. And so that is painful, and that half of their donors don’t fund the reporting—
And so I just always like to kind of get a little bit up on my soapbox about this and say there is a real opportunity for companies to—
Participate as equal actors in the storytelling, by funding that work, by providing skills for that work. Now, 50% of companies don’t do it, but 50% do. And so it is quickly mainstreaming. And I think companies want to stay on the right side of that and really partner with their nonprofits and sharing in that investment.
Carol Cone:
We’re making a lot of those recommendations to our clients, and they’re saying, yes, yes, we understand now that we have to help tell the story, but it needs to be authentic. So this takes me to the third trend, and you call it Trust Is the New North Star. You can say you need to be trusted, but how do you deliver, authentically, on trust?
Sona Khosla:
I mean, that is the million-dollar question, and you could probably answer better than I could, Carol. But I think, fundamentally, it comes down to your ethos on this work. And so we recognize that trust and reputation, they kind of get lumped together, right? You and I both know, that reputation is kind of different than trust. Building trust is much more to do with the relationship, the authentic relationship that you have. And so I would say trust starts on the ground. It doesn’t start at the top. And so what I mean by that is, how do your employees feel about your approach to purpose?
How they feel and believe — what you’re doing really matters, because they are basically your brand advocates on the ground and in the community. So how they talk about your work is going to matter. So, do they believe you? Do they trust your work? Do they trust your motives? I’d say your nonprofits are the other ones — they carry your reputation just as much. And there are a lot of nonprofits in America. So, are you asking your nonprofits how they think of you?
Are you getting NPS scores? Are you surveying them? Do you know what they would say about you if you weren’t in the room? I think those are really important pieces. Finally, I think that it really does come down to how you structure the work and how you communicate the work. And it goes back to that authenticity in communications — making sure that these aren’t corporate narratives and PR narratives, that they’re actually written as authentic impact storytelling that resonates and that does have—
A motive that is bigger than the bottom line.
It will serve the bottom line if you craft it that way.
Carol Cone:
I want to go to the next trend, and that is AI Is the New Paradox. And we’ve all jumped on the AI bandwagon. We’re learning to use it in different ways. We’re being affected by hallucinations. So, what does your report indicate about how organizations are embracing AI to advance their work, and also to have more hands — maybe not real hands, but more help — to do the work?
Sona Khosla:
Yeah, we definitely — the paradox that you alluded to is they definitely have high hopes. There’s high belief that AI can build nonprofit capacity, that can build team capacity and efficient.
There are also hesitations. And I have to say, I feel really proud when I look at this data around the hesitations, because there’s a significant proportion — more than three-quarters said they were worried that AI would reinforce existing funding biases. Seventy-five percent said that it’ll exclude smaller community-led organizations. 68% said it’s just gonna amplify well-resourced nonprofits. And when we’ve done our testing on AI, it has done that, because that’s what AI is trained to do.
And so, the fact that there is so much hesitation, due to these ethical concerns, really gives me confidence that people are being very thoughtful about how and where they are inputting it. We’ve talked to nonprofits about this, and actually, I just say nonprofits are a phenomenal voice in this. They can help you train your AI and learn, because they’re in the community — they understand how to combat bias. So, that’s on the hesitation side. On the high-hope side, we see a lot of excitement and optimism around improving employee experience. So, how can AI personalize?
So, seventy-one percent said that AI should be used to match employees, to give them volunteering opportunities. I mean, we know how uncanny our AI knows us now, right?
I think that’s where the optimism is, where we see it working well in our personal and professional lives. We think it should also work on the impact side. And so this data is actually really informing how Benevity is approaching AI as well. We look really closely at where is their hesitation — where’s a rightful hesitation? Only twenty-three percent of companies said they were willing to use grant scoring that was AI-driven. And so we really built our grant scoring capabilities, recognizing that there’s gotta be really strong human-in-the-loop processes, to make sure that human judgment is applied.
Carol Cone:
I’m glad you talked about human-in-the-loop. I mean, everybody’s talking about it, but you’re being very specific. And in the show notes, we just wrote a guide called Purpose and AI, and really dove into how purpose is the lens that an organization should — if they know their purpose — for all their AI decision-making.
And we’re going to put that in the show notes, which should be helpful, because we all need to help each other in this field. I am very curious — yes or no — did you use AI to analyze the data for this report this year?
Sona Khosla:
We actually — we’re like 80, 90% human on it. Where we used AI was actually in trimming the survey.
Carol Cone:
Okay. Ah, okay.
Sona Khosla:
We’re asking too many questions.
Carol Cone:
Let’s go to the next. And the fifth — and I don’t know if this is the most important or not, but they’re all important. Volunteering’s Next Act.
What did the report find out about Volunteering’s Next Act?
Sona Khosla:
We actually published a report purely on volunteering. So, for those of your listeners who are really anchored on volunteering, really focused on it, check out the 2026 State of Corporate Volunteering report. That came out in February. So that’s a deep dive. We carried over some of those findings into this report, but also added some new findings. So, two real threads under this theme. One was, volunteering is really succeeding. We’ve put a lot of effort into it. Participation rates are growing. Number of volunteers are going up. However, nonprofits are saying, we’re getting more than we need.
We really are in a funding crisis, and that volunteering is not translating. So that was one of the big revelations in the data, between the nonprofits this year and the corporates — there’s a pretty big divide. So, that’s one piece. The other thing is, a number of companies are starting to think about — we’ve been anchoring on volunteer participation rates, and ours, for as long as I’ve been in this space — probably you too, Carol. But there’s a point where it’s like, but what is this worth? And the companies who have really high participation rates can easily say our culture feels different because people give.
It cultivates those skills of empathy, kindness, generosity, that you want to show up in the boardroom and in the meetings just as much as you do in the community. However, what we’re seeing is a lot of companies starting to think differently about the why of volunteering. And so, that’s one thing that really struck us — there’s this emerging picture that’s starting to form around a different why, which is a little less around just culture building. It’s more about how volunteering is developing the human skills that will matter most as we start to navigate this massive kind of workplace disruption and transformation by AI.
So 57% of them said that they’re increasing focus on how volunteering enables social connections between employees and teams.
50% looking for volunteering outcomes around sparking innovation. 47% saying they want their volunteer programs to build creativity and problem-solving — so, the things that humans can do really well. 49% saying they want volunteering to build empathy and issues awareness. So, for us, what we’re starting to see is that, actually, volunteering.
Carol Cone:
It’s the human skills, yeah.
Sona Khosla:
It’s a human-skills development program. And so your learning and development people, your talent development teams, really actually need to be using the volunteering programs to instill experience-based learning. That’s what you could call volunteering — experience-based learning. We see this, Carol. I’m sure you see this too. A lot of companies are really focused on the technology and the technical enablement. Do you know how to use your AI? Do you know how to prompt well?
Do you know how to train it well when it’s kind of cutting out? How do you manage your AI? Very technical skills. We’re saying, but, in order for your employees to be the best that they can, and to really maintain their competitiveness in this market, they also need to be good colleagues. They need to have business acumen. They need to be able to exercise judgment and problem-solving, and that creativity and that innovation. And so, it’s gotta be parallel tracks.
You’ve got the technical and technology training, and you’ve got the human skills training, and volunteering should be a part of that.
Carol Cone:
I love it. That’s great. I want to also ask you about just, in general, volunteerism events. Because there’s this whole thing about kitting. What are some of the other just tried-and-true — you see, I’m sure, in a lot of your conversations with not-for-profits — other ways, besides walks? Okay, you’ve got walks, and you’ve got runs, and you’ve got kitting. Are there any other new ways of bringing — that’s not so much skills-based, it’s more hands-on human?
Any other ones that are being developed that you’re seeing? Wow, there’s some new ones breaking through.
Sona Khosla:
Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, we are definitely seeing a high proliferation of kind of the hands-on kit building, the direct [inaudible] supporting the direct service organizations. I think the virtual opportunities obviously really grew. So, mapping, or training, or mentoring virtually — all of those things are really powerful.
And then just a lot of virtual opportunities. The other thing I will say was, one of the things that came out of the pandemic that hasn’t waned as much as I thought it would have — was this concept of volunteer acts of kindness. So, not necessarily volunteer acts in support of a nonprofit, or a beneficiary, or a client of that nonprofit — it was more like just acts of generosity, so, helping people. And so we still see a significant amount of volunteer acts of kindness tracking on our platform. And when you talk to the clients — the corporate clients who run those programs — and ask, why do you reward just someone helping a neighbor, for example, shoveling a walk for an elderly neighbor, or those kinds of things, they’ll say, well, that is kind of the community that we want to build, and those are the traits that we want people to have in the company.
And they’re actually a really great entry point into volunteering. And so it allows us to offer something very simple that gets someone thinking about volunteering and how they can contribute their time. And so they act as this gateway. So I’d say a lot of companies have actually really built this life cycle. And so it’s — how do you get them in, and then how do you nurture — employee resource groups, I’d say that’s the other really big, creative concept we’re seeing — employee resource groups are actually hosting town halls. Some clients include those as volunteer hours, and then those ERGs set up volunteer opportunities with the organizations.
Carol Cone:
Okay, so, you’re gonna get me to one of my favorite areas that I’ve been exploring, and I don’t know if there’s a correct answer to it, which is that companies want to focus. They don’t have unlimited dollars. What’s your recommendation? How to balance?
Sona Khosla:
It is hard, but actually there’s a really, really tried-and-true, paved path on this. So the first thing I would say is, you’ve got your strategy, your corporate strategy. Of course, you’ve got your cause pillars — your granting program is going to be primarily focused on that, as it should be, because you’re gonna need those deep partnerships, that deep communal — there’s a significant amount of financial, but also non-financial, investment. Those pillars can get pulled into your employee engagement program. But your employee engagement program should be measured by completely different KPIs — it is, if it is an employee engagement program, it should engage employees. So participation matters. To be getting involved, you’re not looking at the value of dollars to a single cause necessarily.
So I would say your KPIs are very different, but where you can actually kind of measure the overlap is also interesting. So, you can promote — you can bias some of your promotions towards where your cause pillars are. But make sure that your people also know that what they care about matters. Otherwise, you will not get that affinity. If they feel like they are being used to further just the company’s goals, without the opportunity to be able to further their own personal goals at the same time, you don’t get that trust and reputation.
And so we’d say, great — run them parallel, crossover, promote your cause pillars, get them engaged. A portion of them will start to fall in love with those cause pillars and those nonprofits. And then measure what percentage of your employees get involved in those, how much funding goes towards those. But don’t set that as your top KPI — that’s just nice spillover and crossover. Keep those KPIs defined separately. I — that is what I’ve seen the companies who do it best do. That gives you the holistic impact that you’re looking for as a company.
Carol Cone:
Super, great, thank you. So, as we begin to wind this down, I always like to ask a series of rapid-fire questions.
Sona Khosla:
Let’s do it.
Carol Cone:
They’re really easy. Don’t overthink it. Okay, so what’s one word that best describes your work?
Sona Khosla:
Meaningful.
Carol Cone:
All right. What keeps you hopeful in the days the work feels heavy?
Sona Khosla:
Talking to nonprofits who have gone through worse.
Carol Cone:
Okay. What’s one lesson you’ve learned from your work that you couldn’t have learned anywhere else?
Sona Khosla:
Listening.
Carol Cone:
Ah, okay. What’s one small action people can take today to advance purpose or create impact in their own communities?
Sona Khosla:
Ask yourself what you care about and do one thing.
Carol Cone:
Love it. Okay. If you could leave our listeners with one idea or feeling today, what would it be?
Sona Khosla:
Joy.
Carol Cone:
Oh, I love that. Okay, so I think you did great. You did great. What haven’t we discussed, or what do you want to just reinforce, as we give our goodbyes for now?
Sona Khosla:
Yeah, there was one stat that was nestled in the report that had me pause and smile. And that stat was that 86% of impact leaders felt proud of the choices that were made. And I think a lot of us went on an emotional roller coaster for the last few years. It has been very hard. We’ve been in defensive mode. We feel like we haven’t won as many conversations as we’ve wanted to. Many companies have lost some funding, nonprofits have lost funding. It’s felt like there’s been loss. And when I look at the stat that 86% feel proud, it tells me it’s not in spite of it being hard, it’s because it was hard. And I think that is really profound. So, I think if you can step back, at the end of the day, and say, we really did the best that we could, and I’m proud of where we’ve landed — I mean, that’s all you’re really looking for in life.
Carol Cone:
What a great way to end this conversation. So, Sona, thank you so much for coming on the show. The report is great. We’ve got lots of things we’re going to put in the show notes. And hopefully you’ll come back again, because you’re doing such great work—
Sona Khosla:
Carol, we need to have you on our podcast. We need you talking about trust.
Carol Cone:
Okay. I’m happy to do that. We’ve got new research coming up in the fall, after the election, which I’m sure is going to be really illuminating. And, yeah, happy to share, and keep doing the amazing work that you’re doing. Thanks for coming on to Purpose 360. It’s been a delight and very, very informative for our listeners.
Sona Khosla:
Oh, thank you, Carol.
Carol Cone:
Keep up the great work.
This podcast was brought to you by some amazing people, and I’d love to thank them: Anne Hundertmark and Kristin Kenney at Carol Cone ON PURPOSE. Pete Wright and Andy Nelson, our crack production team at TruStory FM. And you, our listener — please rate and rank us, because we really want to be as high as possible, as one of the top business podcasts available, so that we can continue exploring together the importance and the activation of authentic purpose. Thanks so much for listening.
