New Venture Fund (NVF) has released its 2026 Impact Report: A Home for a Better Future. Arriving just in time for NVF’s 20th anniversary, the report makes a simple case: when good ideas have the right home, they can become lasting impact.
A Home Base for Changemakers
NVF is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization and a dedicated fiscal sponsor. In practice, that means NVF provides a fully operational home base for charitable projects working to build a better future, with support for accounting, compliance, human resources, grants management, and more, all staffed and ready to go. A changemaker can start pursuing a vision in weeks rather than years, without first becoming an accountant, an HR director, and a compliance officer.
“Basically, we help charitable projects do two things: get off the ground quicker than they otherwise could, and operate responsibly and well,” writes NVF President Lee Bodner in the letter that opens the report. “After 20 years, we are experts at both.”
Why It Matters Now
Last year, funding grew more volatile and regulatory demands grew more complex. Too often, the charitable projects doing the most consequential work have the least internal capacity to absorb the shocks. Such moments are when a stable home base matters most.
“In moments like these, providing a safe home and community—keeping the proverbial lights on, water running, and home fires burning—is more essential than ever,” Bodner writes. “At NVF, proudly supporting each of our projects has never been optional; it’s the point of our existence.”
Stories of Impact
The report highlights a small sample of the projects that call NVF home:
- Housing Narrative Lab is changing how Americans understand housing as a basic need.
- Care Out Loud, a campaign from One Family Foundation, helps people recognize themselves as caregivers sooner and find support before they’re overwhelmed.
- Multisolving Institute helps leaders tackle climate, health, and equity together rather than in silos, built on the premise that one well-designed investment can solve more than one problem at once.
- The Horizons Project acts as a “network weaver,” connecting the people and movements working toward a healthy, inclusive democracy.
- TheDream.US, which has called NVF home for more than a decade, serves as the nation’s largest college-access and success program for Dreamers.
This year’s impact report also details NVF’s equity and belonging investments: approximately $18.7 million placed with credit development finance institutions (CDFIs) and minority depository institutions that bring flexible, lower-cost capital to communities long locked out of the financial system.
By the Numbers
At NVF, impact is the ultimate metric, but the sheer volume of work supported is also impressive. In 2025, NVF:
- Awarded $352.1 million in grants to more than 5,800 recipients
- Supported $545.8 million in programmatic expenditures
- Received $518.9 million in contributions
- Awarded grants in 49 states and territories
- Awarded grants totaling more that $52 million to 250 international organizations
- Employed more than 650 people
Building Sunflower Services
In addition to highlighting NVF’s impact, this year’s report describes one of the most significant investments in NVF’s history. In November 2025, NVF joined two trusted partners, Windward Fund and Hopewell Fund, to create Sunflower Services, a public benefit corporation built by and for the nonprofit community it serves.
Why do this? Because owning the operational engine lets NVF and its partners move faster to make the investments and changes our hosted projects need. The division of labor is simple. Projects bring the vision. NVF provides the home base, community, and oversight. Sunflower brings additional expertise and a flexible toolkit for helping projects overcome challenges and grow their impact.
For funders, it means every investment in an NVF-hosted project is backed by operational infrastructure built to the highest standards. Crucially, none of this changes who NVF is: its mission, governance, and accountability to the people we work with remain the same.
Looking Forward
Fiscal sponsors often function as invisible infrastructure, and NVF is fine with that. What matters is that bold ideas have a home base from which to become lasting impact.
“On our 20th anniversary, I am more convinced than ever that the best way to honor our values is to keep doing the often unglamorous, always essential work of helping good people create a better future for all,” Bodner writes.
Read the full 2026 Impact Report: A Home for a Better Future to learn more about NVF’s first 20 years and get a first glimpse at what comes next. Questions? Contact us at info@newventurefund.org.
We invite you to explore the report here.
