Scott Galloway’s 2026 Predictions: Through A Nonprofit Lens

Every year, New York University professor and author Scott Galloway publishes a set of predictions about the near future of business and technology.

He is typically speaking to investors and corporate leaders. I listened as someone who works every day with in-the-trenches nonprofits.

Galloway has an excellent track record. He called the rise of emerging markets and the dominance of YouTube and podcasts. He also spends a lot of time thinking about power, capital, and young men who feel left out of both.

His latest book, Notes on Being a Man, digs into the crisis facing boys and men, from loneliness to falling educational attainment. If your work touches youth, mental health, or violence prevention, it is well worth your time.

Watching his 2026 predictions, I kept asking myself: What does the future he's describing do to the communities and causes that nonprofits serve?

Here Are Six Things That Matter for Nonprofits in 2026, IMHO.

1️⃣ AI whiplash is coming to your strategy and your budget

Galloway expects an AI correction and cheap, high-quality Chinese models that crush margins for United States AI leaders.

If you run a nonprofit, do not build your plan around a single expensive vendor, or assume today’s “AI darling” will still look strong in a year.

Tie AI projects to clear mission outcomes and to scenarios where funding gets tight. You want investments that still make sense if the market cools or your favorite tool stumbles.

2️⃣ The data center gold rush will hit your community

He believes AI firms will soak up staggering amounts of electricity and water while creating very few jobs.

For nonprofits, that looks like higher operating costs and more clients in “energy distress” who cannot keep the lights on.

Even if you are not a climate group, energy burden and utility justice should be part of your strategy conversations. Someone will need to organize around rising bills and land use. That “someone” often turns out to be local nonprofits.

3️⃣ Automation will quietly rewrite the jobs agenda

Galloway’s top stock pick is Amazon, mainly because AI-driven robotics enable it to grow revenue without adding headcount.

If he is right, 2026 to 2030 is a period when automation accelerates, and the benefits fall very unevenly. Workforce programs, youth employment initiatives, economic justice groups, and unions cannot keep assuming the labor market will absorb people the way it used to.

Nonprofits also need to be honest about how they use automation inside their own organizations. Are you freeing staff to do more human work, or just squeezing more output out of already tired people?

4️⃣ Short-form video and AI will eat attention

He sees short-form video plus AI as a meteor strike for Hollywood.

It is also a problem for anyone who needs people to care about something longer than 30 seconds.

If your 2026 communications plan still assumes donors and community members will read long emails and dense reports, you are talking to a shrinking audience.

The opportunity is to treat TikTok, Reels, YouTube, and podcasts as civic infrastructure. These are places where you can drop small, sharp stories that ladder up to real learning and action, not just “engagement.”

5️⃣ Prediction markets are the next addiction front for young people

Galloway calls prediction markets the next big vice, piled on top of sports betting. It is basically gambling on politics, dressed up as “participating in democracy.”

For nonprofits working on youth development, mental health, family stability, or democracy, this is a signal. You will need prevention work that talks about dopamine, money, and algorithms in the same breath.

The crisis will not only be about substances. It will also be about the apps that drain bank accounts and attention at the same time.

6️⃣ Synthetic relationships will make real community work more critical, not less

Most young people have already tried AI companions. Many are spending more time with “character” bots than with actual friends; at the same time, loneliness is spiking, and more people report having no close relationships at all.

If you lead a nonprofit that puts people in a room together, you are not doing yesterday’s work. You are on the front line of rebuilding the skills and trust that synthetic relationships erode.

In 2026, that might be the most radical thing you can do.

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Scott is talking to investors who want to know where to place their bets. But the impacts land on communities first.

Nonprofits can’t set interest rates or decide which AI company survives. You can choose how prepared your organization is for the social side of these trends.

That might mean three simple moves in 2026:

• Run a staff-and-board conversation that treats these predictions as scenario planning, not entertainment.

• Pick one place to use AI that clearly strengthens your mission and one place where you agree you will not use it.

• Recommit to the core of your work that no model can replace: building genuine relationships, in real communities, with real accountability.

The future that Galloway describes is already on its way.

The question for nonprofits is not “Will this happen?”

It’s whether you will treat these trends as background noise or as a call to step up and defend the people who have the least say in shaping this future.