Research Report

NEW ORLEANS – October 13, 2026 -- Across 18 capacity domains, 57% of identified nonprofit needs received no or very little support, according to the first State of Capacity Building report from Catalyst Exchange. The survey sets a national baseline for tracking sector capacity over time.

The report, titled Closing the Capacity Gap, draws on input from 408 nonprofits, 101 intermediaries and 135 funders working in education and youth development. It also uses focus groups and interviews. Catalyst Exchange describes a sector squeezed by rising demand, funding cuts, burnout and AI transformation.

Funders and nonprofits agree on priorities, but money does not follow

Fund development (66%) and revenue strategy (52%) rank as the top nonprofit capacity needs, and funders name the same areas for support. Yet fewer than half of funders report funding capacity building. Only 19% of nonprofits received a grant designated for it in the past year.

Washington – October 13, 2026 -- China installed 295,000 industrial robots in 2024, 54% of the global total, versus 34,200 in the United States, according to the preliminary report of the National Security Commission on Robotics for Advanced Manufacturing, an initiative of the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP).

The Commission is co-chaired by Senator Ted Budd (R-NC), Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and SCSP President Ylli Bajraktari. It finds that the U.S. leads in the technologies forming the "brain" of robotics, including AI, computer vision, autonomy and software. It lacks the scale to deploy robots, produce robotic systems and manufacture critical components domestically.

Houston – October 13, 2026 -- Healthcare professionals spend an average of 86 minutes a day on administrative tasks they believe AI could eliminate or significantly reduce, according to the fifth annual Compass Survey from healthcare operations software provider symplr. Directors and managers report 106 minutes a day, roughly a fifth of the workday.

Core hospital processes remain largely manual

Between 40% and 46% of clinicians, operations and IT respondents describe credentialing, contract management, workforce scheduling and supply chain management as fully manual. Only 2% to 6% call these processes fully automated.

MADRID – October 13, 2026 -- An estimated 6.8 million women across nine countries are experiencing infertility right now, according to the inaugural IVI Institute Fertility Barometer, which also finds that 36% of women with a target age for starting a family had their first child later than desired. IVI Institute, formerly IVI RMA Global, released the study alongside a group-wide rebrand that unites its clinic networks.

Survey of 24,074 women quantifies the gap between desired and actual family size

GfK, a NielsenIQ company, conducted the online survey of women aged 19 to 49 in Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Portugal, the UAE, the U.K. and the U.S. Fieldwork ran from May 16 to July 3, 2026. The margin of error is ±0.63 percentage points at a 95% confidence level, with larger margins among subgroups.

Birmingham, Mich. – October 13, 2026 -- Only 14% of Finance leaders say their AI investments have delivered "enterprise value and decision impact," even though 74% now use AI to reduce manual work, according to OneStream's inaugural Forward Finance Index.

The survey covers 1,300 CFOs and equivalent Finance leaders at mid-market ($500M-$999.9M revenue) and enterprise ($1B-$10B+ revenue) organizations in the U.S., U.K., and France. It benchmarks them across five areas: AI strategy, data, workforce, operations, and IT collaboration.

Only 6% of Finance organizations lead across all five areas

More than half (52%) rank as "Followers," held back by data they cannot fully trust, AI without measurable ROI, limited visibility into operational decisions, disconnected IT roadmaps, and an unprepared workforce. Four in ten executives say data quality issues regularly block or delay AI projects.

Zurich – October 13, 2026 -- Approximately 30% of monitored organizations experienced at least one fake IT support impersonation attempt through Microsoft Teams in the first half of 2026, according to Ontinue's 1H 2026 Threat Intelligence Report. The managed detection and response (MXDR) provider says attackers are gaining scale by exploiting trusted identities, collaboration platforms, software supply chains and routine business workflows rather than by building more sophisticated malware.

The findings draw on incident investigations, threat intelligence research and telemetry from Ontinue's Advanced Threat Operations team.

Plover, Wisconsin – October 12, 2026 -- Women hold approximately 31% of C-suite and executive positions in trucking, but only 2.5% of diesel technician roles, according to the Women In Trucking Association's 2026-27 WIT Index.

The survey ran from November 2025 through April 2026 and drew about 210 respondents. Participating organizations reported demographics, the status of their diversity and inclusion policies, and the share of women in various roles.

Women hold 37.5% of supervisory roles and 29% of board seats

Women account for 37.5% of supervisory leadership positions and 29% of board of directors members among respondents. The C-suite share is approximately 31%.

HR leads functional roles at 76.5% women, while technicians trail at 2.5%

Women make up 76.5% of human resources and talent management roles, 45.5% of dispatchers and 44% of safety positions. Diesel technicians are the outlier: women hold just 2.5% of those roles.

New York City – – October 12, 2026 -- Among regulated organizations that report financial damage from document workflow failures, 21% put the cost at $500,000 or more, according to a new S-Docs report, The Regulated Workflow Divide. The survey of 600 U.S. professionals in healthcare, financial services and the public sector also found that about 50% of organizations expose sensitive data outside their system of record.

Fragmented tooling drives much of the exposure. Some 69% of organizations route critical documents through three or more tools, and 76% use more than one tool for the same document-related function. Employees lose roughly 25% of their workweek re-entering data, reformatting documents and compensating for disconnected systems.

Amsterdam, N.Y. – October 11, 2026 -- Sticker Mule generated more than $2.7 billion in economic activity for New York State between 2016 and 2025, according to an independent study by Epsilon Economics released by the company. The analysis covers the direct, indirect and induced effects of the custom-printing manufacturer's operations.

Study credits Sticker Mule with 9,500 year-long equivalent jobs and $681.5 million in wages

Of the 9,500 year-long equivalent jobs, 5,501 are directly at Sticker Mule. More than 4,000 are follow-on positions in real estate, employment services, warehousing, security, restaurants, hospitals and other industries across the state. Wages tied to those jobs total $681.5 million.

Company activity delivered $49.5 million in New York State tax revenue

The tax total includes $18 million in income tax, $15 million in corporate tax and $6.2 million in sales tax.

Global – – October 08, 2026 -- Nearly half of all active construction work runs behind schedule in a typical week, with sites keeping only 52.8% of activities on track, according to a new benchmarking report from the Buildots Intelligence Lab. The report, the first in an ongoing research series, measured 21 core construction activities to establish what it calls construction's first objective, data-driven performance baseline.

Projects deliver just 63% of planned weekly output

The typical construction project completes only 63% of its planned weekly output, leaving 37% of planned work volume undelivered. Of the 21 activities tracked, 20 fell short of plan, ranging from 38% delivery on resilient and soft flooring to drywall framing, the sole activity that exceeded its target at 122%.