WIG Impact Report 2025-26 | Building leaders across sectors to deliver growth and prosperity
For over 40 years, WIG has served as the UK's trusted, independent convener for leaders across government, business, education, and civil society. We are an independent, non-lobbying organisation which convenes and develops leaders to deliver change.
2025-26 was a year of both pressure and momentum: economic complexity and global uncertainty tested institutions across every sector. At the same time, the UK's long-term policy agenda moved from intent to implementation, from industrial strategy to net zero to public service reform, placing cross-sector collaboration not at the margins of delivery but at its very heart. We stayed focused on our vision: enabling a community of leaders who collaborate across sectors to deliver the inclusive economic growth and social prosperity that the UK needs now.
This report sets out our impact in 2025-26, a year in which the gap between leaders’ belief in cross-sector collaboration and their ability to deliver it remained alarmingly wide, and in which WIG’s response to that challenge reached further and deeper than ever before.
What you'll discover inside
• Section 1 highlights the key findings from the second annual State of Cross-Sector Collaboration survey, which confirms what leaders across sectors already sense: conviction without capability is not enough. These findings, along with international evidence on what successful collaboration requires, frame our work.
• Section 2 focuses on how, in the context above, the WIG model operates across three mutually reinforcing pillars: developing collaborative leadership, convening strategic dialogue, and evidencing what works to close the gap between what leaders believe collaboration can achieve and what they feel equipped to deliver.
• Section 3 demonstrates the scale of our impact in numbers. In 2025, over 4,300 leaders participated in 93 strategic policy dialogue events. The number of leaders completing WIG leadership and talent development programmes more than doubled year on year. Our bi-monthly newsletter brought original thought leadership, sector insights, and best practices to 40,000+ senior leaders, with engagement rates that consistently outperformed industry benchmarks.
• Section 4 brings that impact to life through case studies across all three pillars. Under ‘developing leadership capabilities,’ it spotlights the Exchange Programme, Charity Next secondments, NED and Trustee placements, and the Women's Leadership Programme. Under ‘convening strategic dialogue,’ it covers the Cabinet Secretary's Annual Interview, CEO–Permanent Secretary dinners, and the Workings of Whitehall and Workings of Business programmes. Under 'evidencing what works,' it details our State of Cross-Sector Collaboration survey, International Benchmarking Report, and Organisational Raids, equipping leaders with real-world insight into what cross-sector collaboration requires.
• Section 5 reflects WIG's growing commitment to place. In 2025, 26% of our leadership and talent development events were held outside London. Our Greater Manchester Leaders of Tomorrow programme marks the beginning of a replicable model for place-based collaboration that we intend to take across the UK.
• Section 6 highlights the establishment of WIG's Membership Advisory Council, comprising senior cross-sector leaders ensuring that member insight directly shapes WIG's strategic direction, Board discussions, and programme development.
• Section 7 provides insight into WIG’s financial position and reflects a year of disciplined growth: a net surplus and membership at a historic high with a strong renewal rate.
• Section 8 introduces the board of trustees whose governance ensures WIG's work remains grounded in the realities leaders face across all sectors, and accountable to the ambition we have set ourselves.
• Section 9 showcases the breadth of WIG's membership: over 250 leading organisations spanning every UK central government department, major FTSE companies, leading universities, and civil society bodies, the cross-sector community at the heart of everything we do.
• Section 10 looks ahead to 2029, setting out WIG’s ambitions to deepen strategic dialogue, scale leadership development and alumni outreach, and expand our place-based model, beginning in Greater Manchester and moving to more regions across the UK.
The appetite for genuine cross-sector leadership has never been greater. The leaders who engaged with WIG returned to their institutions with broader perspectives, stronger networks and greater confidence in collaborative working. At a time when the UK’s most pressing challenges demand precisely this kind of leadership, WIG’s contribution to building trusted conditions for it is both measurable and material
