Erin Worsham, Executive Director of CASE
October 2025
Every September, global leaders, innovators, and activists converge in New York for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and Climate Week and engage in discussions on the world’s most pressing challenges and emerging solutions. Whether you’re a funder, policymaker, or impact leader, here are three takeaways from this year’s events:
1. Beyond CSR: The Power of Corporate–Social Enterprise Partnerships
One theme that emerged was that corporate–social enterprise (SE) partnerships are no longer acts of charity – they are strategic business moves.
There are many examples of companies and SEs partnering: direct investments, co-created products, employee engagement programs, and more. This year, one topic stood out—procurement. Why? Consider the scale:
- A typical Fortune 500 company works with more than 10,000 suppliers.
- Global supply chains are the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions and rely on the labor of over 17 million people in modern slavery conditions.
- FTSE 100 firms spend about $12 million annually on CSR initiatives, but nearly $5 billion on procurement.
The opportunity for social procurement, or sourcing from impact-first enterprises, is massive.
Take Greyston Bakery and Ben & Jerry’s. Through parent company Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s sources its famous fudge brownies from Greyston, a social enterprise that provides jobs for people facing barriers to employment. The result? Millions of dollars in revenue and thousands of jobs created. Though, as Greystone’s CEO Kevin McGahren and Ben & Jerry’s Global Head of Values-Led Sourcing Cheryl Pinto emphasized, ongoing communications and balance are essential to sustaining success.
We’re also seeing innovation abroad. South Korea’s SK Group established Happy Narae, a procurement services arm prioritizing social enterprises, generating more than $148 million in social procurement since 2015. The conglomerate has also pioneered Social Progress Credits, a pay-for-results financing mechanism that rewards enterprises that can prove measurable social impact—directing over $50 million to those programs.
But whether in Seoul or New York, one element underpins every sustainable partnership: trust. As entrepreneur Stephanie Speirs reminded us, “Do they know you? Do they like you? Do they trust you?” There are no shortcuts to collaboration: trust-building must happen long before the first contract or capital commitment.
2. Climate Adaptation: A Scalable Opportunity
While “climate mitigation” remains vital, Climate Week shed light on an urgent priority: climate adaptation and resilience (A&R).
Mitigation tackles the causes of climate change by working to reduce emissions. In contrast, adaptation and resilience prepare for and lessen climate impacts through early warning systems, drought-resistant crops, and tools like stronger infrastructure and flood insurance. Both approaches are essential and must move forward in tandem. Leaders highlighted three ways to accelerate action on adaptation:
- Increase A&R investment: Research from Tailwind Futures shows that while pure A&R startups (e.g., climate risk analytics, disaster preparedness, and human-cooling technologies) make up 12% of climate tech ventures, they only receive 3%, or about $4.5B, of total sector funding. The imbalance underscores the capital gap—and opportunity—to strengthen communities and industries for the realities of a changing climate.
- Amplify investable A&R innovations: Investors highlighted promising investment opportunities in A&R, including:
- Insuretech (e.g., Futureproof Technologies which offers property-specific insurance solutions that encourage proactive climate risk mitigation).
- Better data, analytics and predictive models (e.g., Sand Technology which applies AI to disaster response, healthcare, and water waste).
- Resilient construction materials (e.g., DexMat, developer of resilient, sustainable construction materials). As CEO Bryan Hassin put it, “We cannot adapt to the climate of tomorrow with the materials of yesterday.”
- Center equity and social outcomes in A&R: Hunter Maats, CEO of Resilience Investments, noted, “Climate migration is the dominant humanitarian challenge of the 21st century.” Jay Koh, Co-Founder of the Lightsmith Group, emphasized that adaptation “isn’t a product—it’s housing, infrastructure, health systems, all made more resilient to change.” These quotes illustrate how social and environmental considerations are interwoven in climate mitigation and adaption and require a systems view.
3. AI for Impact: Between Hype, Horror, and Hope
AI dominated conversations across UNGA and Climate Week—often accompanied by a familiar tension expressed by Vilas Dhar, President of the P. J. McGovern Foundation: “It is easy to be moved in one of two directions – the hype of AI and the horror of AI. Where is the hope of AI?”
Alexis Bonnell, Partnership Lead at OpenAI, also offered a clear framing: “The future of AI won’t be decided in code—it will be decided in character.” Her challenge to leaders was to ensure AI connects and uplifts, rather than divides and exploits. For impact leaders, that starts with three questions:
Who is included?
Nearly 2.5 billion people still lack internet access; in the United States alone, 24 million lack high-speed broadband. As AI evolves, who will get left behind? Michael Ogundare, CEO of Crop2Cash, shared how his team is breaking those barriers by offering AI-powered agricultural support for Nigerian farmers via toll-free phone lines in local languages—no data plans or internet access required.
How are solutions developed?
Ijeoma Mbamalu, CTO of the ACLU, cautioned that too many AI solutions are created for communities, not with them. She urged leaders to co-create with impacted populations, design with privacy in mind from the start, and learn from global examples—not just the tech company-driven ecosystem in the US, but also contexts that are leading with regulation, or grassroots approaches.
What role should AI play?
Despite the AI hype, Patty Carroll of AWS reminded participants that “technology is not the solution—it’s a tool to enhance and augment already successful interventions.” A compelling example is Recidiviz, which uses AI to help government agencies manage overwhelming caseloads without replacing human judgment. The north star, co-founder Andrew Warren emphasized, remains improving outcomes for incarcerated individuals, not automating decisions about them.
From procurement to adaptation to AI, this year’s UNGA and Climate Week underscored that impact is central to strategy and that we need pragmatic systems thinkers who can align purpose with partnership, and innovation with inclusion.