January 2026

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 31 jan 2026

Federal spending cuts have created challenging financial situation for nonprofits. To continue to deliver their social mandate nonprofits have to find innovative ways to ensure financial resilience. Aaron Seybert, Managing Director of Social Investment Practice at The Kresge Foundation, says, 'We must acknowledge that these are unprecedented times for the nonprofit sector and taking steps to strengthen financial resilience is crucial but not a guarantee of financial stability. The road ahead will undoubtedly remain uncertain, and many nonprofits will continue to face significant obstacles. Yet by uniting as a sector, we can support one another and fortify the essential work we do. Strengthening our financial footing is key to ensuring we continue serving the most vulnerable communities in our country, even in the face of adversity.' He provides following ways nonprofits can work to overcome financial uncertainties - (1) Review your directors and officers (D&O) insurance policy. (2) Diversify banking relationships. (3) Open lines of credit for liquidity. (4) Review cost allocations on current grants. (5) Speak with funders about converting project support to general operating support. (6) Assess different budget scenarios: Planning for uncertainty. Read on...

The Kresge Foundation: Improving financial resilience: How nonprofits can navigate the impact of federal spending cuts
Author: Aaron Seybert

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 31 jan 2026

In 2025 graphic design saw anti-trend approach where designers experimented with nostalgic and analog approaches, away from the currently hyper-digital, polished, perfection seeking designs. In 2026, shifts are expected in five key areas - print, image production, editorial design, typography, logo design. PRINT - The copy-style raw, low ink look that was visible in later 2025 will continue as a trend. ASSETS - The visual indexing, order and organize style such as collection or collage of assets like photographs or cut outs will continue. LAYOUT - Micrographics, the utilitarian visual language or aesthetically designed technical information, is brought to the fore by designers. They are adopting tight typographic overlays, grids and timestamps as visual devices. TYPOGRAPHY - Letterforms that place expression above function, more wobbly and mismatched, pick and mix approaches will be more visible in 2026. LOGOS - Blotchy style with more variable and fluid forms in logos is expected to continue. Designers that are mentioned and their work represented in the article are - Kevin Hoögger; Merel van den Berg; Maya Valencia; Sydney Maggin; Louis Garella; Charlotte Rohde; Alice Isaac; Andrzej G.; Tala Schlossberg; Jacob Hutch; Jean Pierre Consuegra; Miguel Vides; Hyejin Song; Zak Jensen; Edoardo Benaglia; Luca Devinu; Brandon Wang; Evan Gendell; Angelina Pischikova; Karina Zhukovskaya; Clemens Piontek; Clio Hadjigeorgiou; Eva Rotreklová; Cristian Burgos; Christhian Hurtado; Varada Rege; Jasmina Begović; Harriet Richardson. Read on...

It's Nice That: The graphic trends you'll want to bookmark for 2026
Author: Ellis Tree

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 29 jan 2026

Customer relationships are essential for a brand's continued success and they can't just be build overnight. A lot of effort is needed to be put consistently and creatively over a period of time to build a space in customer's heart and mind in a highly competitive business environment. Martin Pierson, Chief Creative Officer of Tag, suggests ways to avail the right to a customer relationship through creatively designing meaningful and real attention, and providing seamless experiences. He says, 'Marketers spend a lot of time, effort and money on customer loyalty, connection, value and brand affinity. But the reality is, most people don't wake up wanting a relationship with a brand. They want seamless, friction-free experiences.' He emphasises effective use of creativity in every aspect of customer journey. He says, 'Creativity is the one consistent force that cuts through saturation and bridges the gap between a noisy industry and an overwhelmed audience...Creativity is the red thread that ties together strategy, data, technology and execution. It is the element that gives meaning to a message, story to a product, and humanity to an interaction...brands need to build creative processes that encourage risk, variation and experimentation...If people don't want relationships with brands but want brands that fit easily into their lives, creativity isn't an additional layer at the end of the process, but the mechanism that turns utility into experience, and experience into connection...it helps brands express themselves with tone, distinctive and emotional clarity which are the qualities that make a brand feel human rather than transactional.' Read on...

LBBOnline: Redefining Customer Journeys, Creativity and a Brand's Right to a Relationship
Author: Martin Pierson

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 23 jan 2026

Radical innovation involves radical uncertainty and the outcomes can be incongruous. Firms have to apply innovation management concepts that can equip leaders and their teams to deliberately and effectively manage incongruous futures. Team of researchers, José Antonio Rosa of Iowa State University (USA), Marcelo F. de la Cruz Jara of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) München (Germany) and Jelena Spanjol of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) München (Germany), in their theoretical study published in Journal of Product Innovation Management (October 2025), integrate the conviction narrative theory (CNT) and the currently available research literature on radical innovation management and propose a new concept of volitional liminality and other set of practices to successfully maintain and sustain radical innovation management capability. Volitional liminality is defined as 'the capability to operate at the threshold of incongruent futures without prematurely closing options. This ability requires more than cognitive analysis; it relies equally on emotions and social interaction.' Authors explain, 'Our work makes two contributions to the radical innovation management literature. First, it explicitly addresses a firm's ability to concurrently pursue not only different but inherently incompatible futures...By providing an explanation of how firms concomitantly move toward multiple divergent futures, we open a new avenue for innovation management scholars to explore and provide a set of future research priorities...Second, our work helps explain how cognitions and emotions interact to produce greater or lesser opportunities for incongruous futures to be simultaneously enacted by innovation managers...Building on CNT, our work expands extant literature on radical innovation management by acknowledging the role of social processes in the envisioning and enacting of distant and unknown futures that radical innovation involves.' Looking into the future of their research and implications, authors point out, 'We introduce conviction narratives and volitional liminality as mid-level theoretical concepts that problematize scholarly and practitioner understanding of decisions under radical uncertainty. The article sheds light on future-focused knowledge generation processes by applying theories grounded in psychology and management to the domain of radical innovation management...Beyond innovation management, we also contribute to CNT by identifying volitional liminality as a necessary theoretical component and two factors (perspective diversity and factor breadth) that affect the sustainability of volitional liminality in innovation decision-making...Our research provides three important implications for innovation managers seeking to generate future-focused knowledge and make decisions about distant futures. First, we recommend that managers acknowledge that distant-future decisions take place often and involve processes and mental mechanisms that differ substantially...Second, we encourage managers to recognize the participatory character of decisions when distant futures are involved, and that volitional liminality is essential and at the same time hard to sustain...Finally, our conceptual discussion supports the recommendation that significant groups of actors and key stakeholders be engaged in radical innovation management to enhance manageable volitional liminality in innovation teams.' Read on...

WILEY Online Library: Decisions Under Radical Uncertainty: The Role of Volitional Liminality in Radical Innovation
Authors: José Antonio Rosa, Marcelo F. de la Cruz Jara, Jelena Spanjol

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 21 jan 2026

Over the years the clear distinction between nonprofit and for-profit start-ups has diminished and now both types work in each other's arena. Rise of social entrepreneurship and social enterprises is one of the reasons that blurred the difference between the two. Providing solutions that solve social issues can be considered the aim of both, whether they do it to make money or not. All mission driven entrepreneurs while pursuing their goals reach a stage during their start-up journey where they have to make a decision whether to structure it for profit or go the nonprofit route. Cait Brumme (CEO of MassChallenge) and Brian Trelstad (Faculty Fellow at Harvard Business School and a partner at Bridges Fund Management), provide guidance to entrepreneurs to choose the right structure at the right time for the success of their start-up venture. They explain, 'Despite the vanishing distinction, all mission-driven start-ups will eventually face a stark choice about which legal structure to adopt, and the crucial decision point often arrives before the founders are ready to deal with it. There are, of course, options in the middle-so-called hybrid organizations that use elaborate legal structures (involving, say, a parent and a subsidiary) to combine for-profit and nonprofit entities. But in our experience the best start-ups make an explicit, early choice. The decision is a difficult one made under a high degree of uncertainty and is very hard to reverse...In recent years the options for entrepreneurs have increased in the United States, with legislation allowing "benefit corporations" in many states and the introduction of B-Corp certification, which a for-profit company can use to signal to shareholders that it will try to act in the best interests of society, the environment, and all stakeholders. Venture philanthropists and impact investors emerged to fund social entrepreneurs who sought both financial and social returns—that is, to do well by doing good.' Authors suggest that entrepreneurs should consider 4 factors to avoid issues and make a successful decision to pursue a nonprofit or for-profit direction to their enterprises - FOR PROFIT - Market Readiness (Large, growing, and competitive); Customer Willingness (Profitable to reach and serve at scale); Capital Availability (Ample private capital and business banking services, liquid capital markets for exits; lack of interested donors); Talent & Other Resources (No privileged resources). NONPROFIT - Market Readiness (Small, young, and fragmented); Customer Willingness (Not profitable to reach and serve at scale, require subsidies); Capital Availability (No venture capital but sufficient philanthropic capital to get started, few to no exit options); Talent & Other Resources (Access to privileged intellectual property, professional services, or customers). Read on...

Harvard Business Review: Should Your Start-up Be For-Profit or Nonprofit?
Authors: Cait Brumme, Brian Trelstad