‘We need to lift voices’: Highlights from Ragan’s 2026 Nonprofit Communications and CSR Awards

A nonprofit’s mission or a company’s social responsibility pledge need to be heard to have true impact. Getting those stories out and getting people to act on them falls to communicators.

At Ragan’s 2026 Nonprofit Communications Awards and Corporate Social Responsibility Awards luncheon, comms pros from around the United States and beyond gathered at The Yale Club in Manhattan to honor those who use their skills to advance causes.

“Whether you and your organizations are striving for better health outcomes, building sustainability programs in your communities, advocating for workforce development or offering mentorship to students in underserved communities, you are the bridge between your company’s mission and local, national and even global transformation,” said Rachel Salis-Silverman, CCO at Ragan Communications. “Without you and your team’s exceptional work, these efforts would go unrecognized or not even occur at all.”

During the event, Neil Foote, executive director for Frisco Marketing Strategy at the University of North Texas, accepted the 2026 Outstanding Service to the Industry Award. Foote reflected on a career that’s taken him from reporting at the Miami Herald to leading the National Black Public Relations Society to his current role at UNT.

“There’s a line from Shirley Chisholm, ‘If they don’t invite you and give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair,’” Foote said. “So I’ve taken that folding chair all around this country, to classrooms, to boardrooms, to corporate organizations and all around the industry.”

Before wrapping up his acceptance address, Foote left the room with a challenge.

“Now more than ever, we need to lift voices,” he said. “We need to bring that chair to the table and if we’re already there, bring someone else along with us. Because that is the opportunity, that’s the access and that’s the power. When we bring that chair to the table, we have a chance to change our lives, our communities and our businesses.”

Hear from the winners

Award recipients were asked to answer various prompts.  Neena Samuel, advisor of development communications at the Northwell Foundation, revealed what her team was the most proud of for its award winning campaign that featured an article about reducing mental health stigma in children.

“As storytellers, it’s our job to bring about awareness,” she said. “This was one way to bring about the knowledge that our communities have access to the mental healthcare they need and to inspire support for them.”

Colleen Reese, director of programs at the Astra Zeneca Foundation, shared what her team learned during its award-winning campaign for a community-nonprofit partnership.

“What we’ve learned is simple but powerful,” Reese said. “Health equity should not be an aspiration — it should be the standard. Together, we are not just imagining the future. We are building it.”

Stephanie Jernigan, director of marketing and communications at City of Hope Orange County, said that the song she’d use to best describe her team and its efforts is “Rise Up”, because of the shared mission they maintain in fighting cancer.

“We were asked to support the hiring of 750 employees and 50 physicians to activate Orange County’s only specialty hospital and help an entire health system learn a new way of working in less than a year,” she said. “We created the marathon toward day one that turned a complex transformation into a shared journey.”

When asked about the quote that would best sum up her team’s work, Yolanda King Stephen, senior communications strategist at the National 4-H Council, cited Dory from “Finding Nemo” and her motto to “just keep swimming.”

“Great work takes great communication, teamwork, problem solving, adaptability and the willingness to jump in whenever a deliverable or a team member needs to be saved,” she said. “Those are the same skills we want young people to gain from our Beyond Ready program so they’re ready for whatever’s next for them. I always make sure to put on my floaties, and my team does as well. And we’ll keep swimming.”

Check out the full list of CSR winners here, and the Nonprofit Communications winners here.

Sean Devlin is the senior internal communications editor at Ragan. You can connect with him on LinkedIn here.