For a social sector under tremendous strain, the next era of strength won’t come from more funding alone, but from reimagining pro bono as the connective tissue of social impact.
A Sector at an Inflection Point
IGNITE 2025 wasn’t just another conference, it was where the social impact sector came together to reimage the next generation of pro bono service.
Cat Ward, Taproot CEO, opened with a simple but urgent challenge: “Be real. Be bold.”
The energy in the room reflected exactly that. The nonprofit sector faces unprecedented strain with rising demand, flat funding, technological disruption, and workforce burnout. But this is also a moment of unprecedented possibilities. The same forces creating pressure are also opportunities for reinvention.
Cat framed it plainly: “This moment is asking more of all of us,” she said. “The systems around us haven’t kept pace with the change we’re living through.”
Across two days, leaders from nonprofits, corporations, philanthropy, and technology gathered to reimage the future of pro bono. They asked the hard questions: What does it mean to build capacity in an era of constant change? What kind of partnerships actually deliver impact? And how do we make this ecosystem work for everyone?
Hear Cat Ward’s insights on marketplace demands pressuring nonprofits to rethink everything:
Through these discussions, 6 themes emerged to guide us in creating a more responsive, nimble, and impactful future for pro bono.
Theme 1: Broken Systems Demand Reinvention
Nonprofits are under “existential pressure” from the combined weight of federal and state funding cuts, increased demand, burnout, and outdated systems.
Ann Mei Chang of Candid shared the concerning reality that more than half of U.S. nonprofits have three months or less of cash on hand, even as need continues to rise. The math simply doesn’t work.
Yet, as she and Nazanin Ash of Welcome.US argued, the problem isn’t just scarcity, it’s structure. Legacy government funding models were precarious long before these latest shocks. Both leaders called for courage but pointed out that these systems were “never designed for the scale of today’s challenges.”
Panelists Ann Mei Chang of Candid, Nazanin Ash of Welcome.US, and Matt Klein of Robin Hood Foundation spoke about urgent challenges currently facing the nonprofit sector at IGNITE 2025.
A shared thread emerged: survival can’t be the bar anymore. Nonprofits must reinvent how they operate, and funders, corporations, and intermediaries must do their part.
Listen to Ann Mei Chang’s thoughts on changing the status quo that persisted before this moment:
Takeaway:
The nonprofit sector doesn’t need a “return to normal.” It needs reinvention—new funding structures, shared capacity, and partners willing to modernize how impact gets made.
Theme 2: Purpose Isn’t Peripheral, It’s Core Business Strategy
The same forces putting strain on nonprofits are also reshaping the private sector. As Cat reminded the room, “People are feeling disconnected. Their jobs are changing. The labor economy is funky right now. AI is changing the game, and what you need to be successful looks different than it used to.”
The same topics shaking up the workforce also give companies an opportunity to rethink how to make purpose a performance strategy.
Corporations are under pressure to upskill a workforce anxious about automation, rebuild connection and purpose after years of disruption, and prove that social impact isn’t a side benefit but a strategic lever for growth and retention.
Companies can no longer afford to treat pro bono and CSR as acts of goodwill. Instead, they must embrace service as a powerful tool for building competitiveness and culture. Corporate leaders from PwC, IBM, and State Street described how skills-based volunteering is embedded into their HR and talent strategies, not just philanthropy. And it’s paying dividends.
Hear Michael D. Smith emphasize the alignment between CSR and business strategy for companies to create real impact:
Takeaway:
Future-ready companies view pro bono as both a retention engine and a learning lab, a way to upskill employees, strengthen connection, and deliver value both in the world, and on the balance sheet.
Theme 3: Pro Bono is a Capacity Multiplier, But Only When There is Genuine Partnership
Nonprofits were clear about one thing: short-term help often hurts. They don’t need another round of quick engagements or “partner-hopping.” What they do need is durable, trust-based partnership that builds lasting capacity. These are the partnerships that give organizations breathing room to plan, adapt, and grow.
Diego Mariscal, founder of 2Gether-International, spoke about launching his disability-led startup with limited resources. Through Taproot, he connected with skilled volunteers who filled critical expertise gaps in finance, marketing, and strategic planning that would have otherwise been out of reach.
Talia Young, CEO of Newark Symphony Hall, echoed this: nonprofits need multi-year partners, investors who stay at the table to help them shore up the fundamentals. For her, true partnership meant a corporate ally like Prudential that didn’t just fund a single program, but helped to strengthen her organization’s finance, technology, and marketing systems over time.
Capacity building is more than a budget issue. It’s about infrastructure, continuity, and shared accountability. Pro bono is the force multiplier when it’s designed to complement, not complicate, a nonprofit’s core operations.
Listen to Talia’s Young’s recommendation for strong partnerships founded on trust and transparency:
Takeaway:
Nonprofits don’t need more transactions, they need traction. When grounded in genuine partnership, pro bono closes capability gaps, accelerates learning, and gives teams breathing room to focus on their mission.
Theme 4: For Nonprofits, AI Can Accelerate Impact—or Inequity
AI is reshaping both nonprofit operations and the nature of human work. It represents pressure and possibility. Because many lack the resources, data infrastructure, or training to deploy AI safely and strategically, the sector risks being left behind.
Shaista Keating of TechSoup captured the duality: “We’re not apprehensive about technology — we’re apprehensive about humans being left behind.”
With corporate budgets tightening and national competitiveness framed around AI adoption, nonprofits are watching the gap widen. The risk isn’t just operational, it’s existential.
Joe Fuller of Harvard Business School urges nonprofits, typically a sector slower to adopt new technologies, to view AI as an opportunity to enhance productivity and quality of work life, which can result in higher impact.
“I can’t think of a sector other than state and local government that should benefit more from AI than the not-for-profit sector” — Joe Fuller, Harvard Business School
Panelists like Fuller, Alex Gallafent of IDEO, and Pamela Jacob of IBM agreed that nonprofits can’t afford to wait for perfect readiness. They need corporate allies who will share learning curves, provide access to tools, and build capacity in tandem, not just donate technology and walk away.
Takeaway:
For nonprofits, AI is not a future disruptor, it’s a present dividing line. The organizations that partner early, prototype safely, and share knowledge will multiply their impact; those left isolated risk becoming obsolete.
Theme 5: In an AI-Driven World, Human Skills + Connection Are The New Superpowers
Loneliness, division, and burnout surfaced repeatedly in discussions, with trust and connection named as today’s critical currencies.
As AI reshapes how work gets done, organizations are rediscovering what can’t be automated: empathy, creativity, collaboration, and trust. These “human differentiators” aren’t just soft skills, they’re the glue holding teams, companies, and communities together.
The future isn’t AI or human skills — it’s AI and human skills. That balance is where the real advantage lies.
Cat Ward connected the dots, sharing Taproot’s findings that employees who engaged in skills-based volunteering show measurable growth in adaptability, leadership, and collaboration. These are the same skills companies now rate as most critical in the AI era.
Frederick J. Riley of the Aspen Institute’s Weave Project added a civic lens: “Service is how we rebuild the connective tissue of society.” His research shows four in five Americans want to work together rather than argue, yet isolation and loneliness are at record highs. The type of structured, recurring service experiences that pro bono enables, create real relationships across divides.
Corporate programs like State Street’s prove that when employees connect their expertise to community challenges, both sides grow. Engagement becomes retention. Purpose becomes productivity. Connection becomes culture. That’s the competitive edge no algorithm can replicate.
Hear Elaine Mason highlight that pairing AI and human skills can lead to the best results:
Takeaway:
AI may be the great technological disruptor, but connection is the great human one. Pro bono is where the two meet, a living lab where employees strengthen the skills that technology can’t replace, and organizations rebuild the trust that society can’t function without.
Theme 6: The Future of Impact Depends on Building the Connective Tissue, Together
By the end of IGNITE, one theme had woven through every conversation: no one can fix this alone. Nonprofits, corporations, technologists, funders, and policymakers are each operating on their own tracks, but the challenges ahead demand a shared infrastructure.
The idea that we need to build “connective tissue” surfaced repeatedly. It meant the systems, tools, and trust required to link the supply of skilled volunteers to the demand for nonprofit capacity. Right now, companies struggle to match talent to real needs, nonprofits lack the platforms and guidance to absorb help effectively, and intermediaries are patching the gap without enough shared scaffolding.
We need a new kind of collaboration: one that treats pro bono as a cross-sector ecosystem with aligned incentives, shared data, and co-created measurement frameworks. That would mean funders who invest in connective infrastructure, companies that open their learning platforms, and intermediaries who convene the field rather than compete within it.
If we fail to connect the pieces, we don’t just lose efficiency, we will fail as a sector to solve capacity issue at scale.
The systems around us haven’t kept pace with the change we’re living through. The disconnect isn’t about will, it’s about wiring.” — Cat Ward, Taproot Foundation
Takeaway:
We’re entering an era where impact depends on the connective tissue and strength of the ecosystem. To build the capacity our communities need, we must modernize the wiring of how we work together.
Our Call to Reimagine the System
After two days of real talk, bold ideas, and collective reflection, IGNITE closed back where it began: with an invitation to think bigger and work smarter, together.
In the months ahead, Taproot will translate these insights into action—piloting new models for shared data, digital access, and equitable capacity building.
The message was unmistakable: this moment demands new systems, new mindsets, and new partnerships. The nonprofit sector can’t survive on outdated funding models and goodwill alone.
Corporations can’t meet their talent, innovation, or CSR goals through isolated volunteer programs. And AI, for all its promise, won’t fix inequities on its own, in fact, it will magnify them unless we build more inclusive infrastructure around it.
While pro bono isn’t a silver bullet, it is a big part of the solution that links people, purpose, and performance across sectors. It’s where corporate learning meets nonprofit capacity. It’s where human skills meet technology. And it’s where the next era of social innovation will be built, not in silos, but in systems. As Cat invited us all to do, “Let’s build the next generation of pro bono — together.”
