The Four Teams That Made Waves of Impact in 2026
From pediatrics to elder education, and from the seas to the stars— meet the teams that made an impact at the 6th Annual Anthem Awards.
Each year, we honor the organizations that earn the most awards across categories with distinctive Special Achievement Awards. For our 6th season, we’re excited to spotlight an inspiring cohort of companies and organizations that helped define impact across their communities in 2026.
Read on to meet the groups that have been named Anthem Companies of the Year for their efforts in setting the standard for good.
Small Nonprofit of the Year
The Anthem Awards is proud to recognize DoSomething with the 2026 Small Nonprofit of the Year Award, honoring the small nonprofit that received the greatest amount of recognition across this year’s Anthem Awards categories.
With 7 Gold and 3 Silver Anthem Award wins, DoSomething continues to show how young people can lead when given a clear and meaningful way to take part. For more than three decades, the organization has engaged millions of young people in service and leadership, and this year’s winning work met them where their curiosity already was.
Project STEM Heroes, created with 3M and Amazon MGM Studios, launched alongside the film Project Hail Mary and invited young people ages 13 to 25 to send a 60-second video about what drew them to STEM and the teacher or mentor who sparked that interest. Participants could earn $1,500 scholarships and use The Road to 2060, a career guide to STEM pathways. By pairing a major film release with a simple, personal ask, DoSomething helped young people see themselves in science and celebrate the people who helped them get there.
Nonprofit of the Year
The Anthem Awards is proud to recognize AARP with the 2026 Nonprofit of the Year Award, honoring the nonprofit that received the greatest amount of recognition across this year’s Anthem Awards categories.
With 2 Gold, 9 Silver, and 8 Bronze Anthem Award wins, AARP shows the reach of an organization devoted to the people it serves. From health and caregiving to technology, fraud prevention, and belonging, its work reflects a steady commitment to making sure older adults are informed, protected, and heard.
Its lighthearted and Gold-winning social content series, From the Office: Etiquette Roulette used humor to bridge generations in the workplace and advance one of AARP’s core priorities of combating age discrimination.
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Other Gold-winning campaigns include Amplifying the Voices of Older Adults on Issues That Matter, which helped bring older Americans’ perspectives into urgent public conversations, and The Perfect Scam podcast, which on AI-generated medical ad scams.
Brand of the Year
The Anthem Awards is proud to recognize The LEGO Group with the 2026 Brand of the Year Award, honoring the brand that received the greatest amount of recognition across this year’s Anthem Awards categories.
With 8 Gold and 2 Silver Anthem Award wins, The LEGO Group shows how a brand built on play can make a real difference in children’s lives. Its winning work this year went beyond the toy box, into hospital wards and city streets, with children’s needs and ideas at the center.
The LEGO MRI Scanner is a set made only for hospital use and donated to pediatric wards around the world. It helps young patients understand an MRI scan through play before they have one. More than one million children have used it, and in a survey of healthcare professionals across 432 hospitals, 96% said it helps reduce children’s anxiety and 46% said it reduced the need for sedation.
Through Build the Change: Playful Cities, created with Arup, The LEGO Group asked children to imagine how their cities could make more room for play. It then brought their ideas to life in Berlin, Boston, London, and Shanghai, showing city planners what urban spaces could look like when children help design them.
Agency of the Year
The Anthem Awards is proud to recognize KM Strategies Group with the 2026 Agency of the Year Award, honoring the agency that received the greatest amount of recognition across this year’s Anthem Awards categories.
With 3 Gold, 1 Silver, and 2 Community Voice Anthem Award wins, KM Strategies Group shows what’s possible when strategic communications is put to work for people who are rarely heard. Its work this year centered on justice and accountability, giving families, survivors, and the organizations that serve them the tools to bring hard truths into public view and ask leaders to act.
Its campaign NO MORE: The Campaign for Safety and Accountability in Alabama’s Prisons, created for One for Justice, organized around the crisis inside Alabama’s prisons, where more than 1,500 people have died since 2019. The campaign worked alongside the Oscar-nominated documentary The Alabama Solution and brought families, faith leaders, and formerly incarcerated people to the steps of the State Capitol to honor those who died and call for transparency and independent oversight.
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When Activating Change, which supports people with disabilities in the justice system, faced about $12 million in Justice Department grant cuts, KMSG launched Justice for Every Body. The campaign shared survivor and community stories in the Associated Press, Reuters, CBS News, and The Washington Post. It also reached leaders at major foundations, including Ford, MacArthur, and Rockefeller, helping an organization that had relied almost entirely on government grants begin building a base of private supporters.
