In the face of overlapping crises and deep budget cuts, it’s tempting to bunker down, focusing on managing risks and minimising costs. In this context, social impact professionals face a particular challenge. The scale of the crises we face, from conflict and climate impacts to persistent poverty, compels us to do more, not less, with fewer resources available.
More than 830 million people live in extreme poverty. At today’s pace of progress, ending it could take decades. Meanwhile, 2024 was the first full calendar year in which global temperatures averaged more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the threshold above which extreme weather and ecosystem loss are triggered. And conflict in the Middle East, as with all conflicts, is driving suffering, especially for the most vulnerable, both within the region, deepening displacement and humanitarian strain, and globally, by contributing to rising living costs.
And at exactly the moment when need is rising, resources are tightening. Aid budgets are being cut dramatically across many donor countries and are likely to be cut further. The US cancelled more than 80% of its foreign aid contracts, effectively dismantling much of its aid programme. More broadly, it is feared that the 17 largest donors could cut aid spending by over $60 billion between 2023 and 2026. Despite relatively strong public support, even humanitarian aid is under pressure; global humanitarian appeals receive, on average, less than half of the funding they require.
As a result, many organisations closest to vulnerable communities are under severe strain. A UN survey last year of women-led organisations working in humanitarian contexts found that 90% had already been affected by aid cuts, nearly half expected to shut down within six months, and three-quarters had laid off staff. If you work in the social impact space today, the message is very clear: do more for more people, with fewer resources.
As Founders of Business Fights Poverty, my wife and I have come to learn over 20 years that people in the social impact community are not the sort to stand down in the face of a challenge. As novelist James Lane Allen said, “Adversity does not build character, it reveals it” and that is certainly true of all the social impact professionals we’ve met. So in practical terms, how can we be ambitious in the face of crisis and constraint?
That question will shape our focus over the coming months. Spearheaded by the Business Fights Poverty Institute, we’ll be reaching out to our corporate partners, Impact Partners from civil society, our Global Expert Network, and our wider community to understand what strategies they are employing to stay ambitious.
Based on our conversations so far this year, two approaches are emerging as particularly important. The first is a fresh look at how we partner to drive systemic change; pooling the resources we have and directing them more effectively. And second is harnessing AI to increase our efficiency and effectiveness.
Systemic Partnerships
We have been talking about partnerships since we launched Business Fights Poverty. Yet, even in that context, there appears to be a renewed energy in finding practical ways to join forces, blend finance and work together to tackle the systemic nature of the challenges we face. Right now, the top ask from our partners is to help them tap into wider opportunities to collaborate. Donor agencies are seeking to mobilise private capital, banks are looking to harness domestic philanthropy, Foundations are exploring impact investing models, and companies are looking at new ways of working with like-minded peers and NGOs on shared issues.
Despite the enthusiasm, the reality is that partnerships, especially those aimed at systemic change, can be complex and cumbersome. How do people navigate the practicalities of aligning interests internally, let alone externally across multiple partners? How do they measure and attribute impact? How do they even set about identifying which systemic issues to tackle, and then find relevant, trusted partners? In our own experience of helping partners engage, we have learned that successful collaboration is human-first: where effort is invested in building trust, a shared understanding of the challenge, and genuine co-creation of solutions.
We also believe that the voices of those closest to the challenges must be central. That is why we were excited to become a formal business-focused hub for the Poverty Stoplight, which we are developing as “Compass”, bringing this proven, people-centred tool, used over a million times, to help global companies better target their resources and align with partners around priorities identified by people across their value chains and communities.
AI for Impact
At a time when they need to do more with less, social impact organisations are embracing AI. At Business Fights Poverty, we’ve built a whole suite of tools that have slashed our costs while freeing up our team to focus on truly human tasks of building relationships and unlocking trusted insight. Increasingly, we’re being asked by partners to help them leverage AI to transform their own engagement with people and knowledge. With one, we’re connecting their suppliers to trusted guidance on human rights and living wages, and with another, we’re helping unlock 10 years of enterprise development know-how. And across our community, we see organisations harnessing AI in exciting ways: from helping smallholder farmers receive tailored advice on climate-resilient practices to helping displaced people navigate services and information in multiple languages. We’ll be exploring more examples at an event we’re hosting next month with the University of Cambridge Centre for Human-Inspired Artificial Intelligence..
Yet, AI does not simply scale impact; it can also scale inequality. Following the same fault lines that already shape the world – such as access to technology, data, capital, energy, and education – the gains will not fall evenly. For one thing, around 2 billion people still lack reliable internet access. Studies show that AI will disproportionately impact people already disadvantaged by deep-seated inequities. Studies suggest that jobs disproportionately held by women are nearly twice as likely to be exposed to AI automation. More broadly, economists warn that AI could widen the gap between richer and poorer countries if productivity gains accrue mainly to those who already have a technological advantage.
As with partnerships, our view is that being human-first is key to effectively harnessing the opportunities of AI while managing the risks. Now, more than ever, we need humans, with all our messiness, flaws and failures. Because those come from the experience of making change in the real world possible. Our Global Expert Network, which brings together over 200 professionals with 4,500 years of experience across 30 countries, is already providing valuable strategic support and capacity to those tasked with delivering on ambitious objectives in the current context. AI may become one of the most powerful tools ever created for addressing social challenges, but only if we remain thoughtful about how we use it; only if we keep human judgment at the centre, and only if we ensure that the people most affected by these systems have a voice in shaping them.
Whether through partnerships or AI, progress ultimately comes back to something very human: trust. We have seen that insight on its own is not enough. It helps us understand the problem, but it is relationships that make action possible. Without trust, insight rarely leads to action, and connection does not lead to collaboration.
Over the coming weeks and months, we want to deep-dive into these areas. My colleagues and I will be reaching out to understand what you think. What’s working for you as you continue to be ambitious in the context of crisis and constraint?
