We’re pleased to celebrate four Blue State partners and projects that were selected as 2025 Anthem Awards winners.
In this collection of winning work, an iconic brand gets a modernized redesign at an inflection point for its movement; a supporter activation trains AI to break stereotypes and change how refugees are depicted; an integrated campaign brings a data-dense report about HBCUs to life; and a wave of support uplifts a mission to keep America’s national marine sanctuaries open for all.
These causes and campaigns have inspired donors, advocates, and supporters and made a positive impact on the world at large. To our partners and the teams helping to make this work possible: Congratulations on being recognized as outstanding by the largest and most comprehensive awards program in the social impact community.
The four winners are:
MADD Brand Redesign and Launch, Gold Winner in Health: Campaign – Non-Profit
In 1980, after losing her teenage daughter to a drunk driver, a mother turned grief into action and founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) — in doing so, she sparked a movement. Since then, MADD has contributed to half a million lives saved and supported millions of victims and survivors.
This iconic institution had a logo that matched its rich history, and, in 2024, looked to modernize its brand at an inflection point for the movement to end impaired driving. Blue State developed a new brand identity for MADD that provides the creative and brand infrastructure to reach younger, more diverse audiences and reflects MADD’s ongoing transformation in response to the evolving landscape of impaired driving.
The new branding is future-ready and can speak to new audiences, inspire action, and adapt as this iconic organization continues to evolve. With it, MADD moves into its next phase: finishing the fight a grieving mother started nearly fifty years ago.
Read more about our work with MADD.
United Kingdom for UNHCR’s “Teach AI” Campaign, Silver Winner in Responsible Technology: Campaign – Non-Profit
As a component of the 2023-2024 Winter campaign, UK for UNHCR’s Teach AI activation encouraged supporters to challenge biases, break stereotypes, and help to change how AI depicts refugees.
The campaign confronted the misconceptions and stereotypical representations of refugees in generative AI image models by educating the general public and then empowering supporters to use an AI training model for good. The campaign’s primary engagement mechanism was a story-filled landing page that presented users with the opportunity to feed an AI model with images of real refugees and their personal stories and messages of hope.
The campaign generated a 1.8 return-on-ad-spend (ROAS) from new donors through paid channels, 20% over target. It also drove a 3.7% brand boost and a spike in searches for “UNHCR AI”.
Read more about our work with UK for UNHCR.
UNCF’s Celebrating HBCUs’ Economic Impact, Bronze Winner in Education, Art & Culture: Impact Report
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) create hundreds of thousands of jobs and generate millions of dollars in revenue — collectively, they are economic engines for the United States. The first HBCU Economic Impact Report, released by UNCF in 2017, captured this impact in concrete numbers. That report was a game-changer and moved the needle on Capitol Hill with Republicans and Democrats alike.
In 2024, UNCF released a new report. To generate awareness, Blue State created high-impact assets that brought the data to life in an engaging story and launched a surround-sound, integrated campaign to amplify findings and communicate the value of HBCUs.
Earned media coverage in Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, RollingOut, HBCU Buzz, BlackPress USA, and Blavity complemented an op-ed by Dr. Michael Lomax, president and CEO of UNCF, and an explainer-style video put the data into context and generated more than 3 million completed views. Digital marketing toolkits for UNCF partners and a full suite of paid ads drove audiences to a microsite featuring the centerpiece of the campaign: the 10-page impact report, full of photos, bold text, and infographics alongside custom factsheets summarizing HBCUs’ economic impact by state, which helped reach legislators on Capitol Hill.
Building a Wave of Support for the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, Bronze Winner in Sustainability, Environment & Climate: Fundraising Strategy — and a Community Voice Award Winner!
The National Marine Sanctuary Foundation is the leading voice for US protected waters, working with communities to conserve and expand those special places for a healthy ocean, coasts, and Great Lakes.
In 2022, the Foundation looked to Blue State to help build a sustainable fundraising program. After an initial strategy phase, we developed an ambitious roadmap detailing how to scale the Foundation’s fundraising program to more than 10X its existing size over five years and meaningfully advance the organization’s mission.
With creative campaigns that featured compelling calls-to-action, stunning visuals, and actionable impact messaging, we primed audiences to engage and, eventually, to give. With advocacy-focused lead-generation campaigns, we increased the size of the Foundation’s addressable audience by half over 6 months.
These acquisition campaigns culminated in a fundraising campaign that launched in June 2024, during National Ocean Month. The campaign leveraged a unique premium: sticker packs designed in a style inspired by 1930s WPA posters. The stickers featured one-of-a-kind illustrations, and the ongoing series of new stickers still serves as a versatile tool for fundraising, giveaways, and social media promotions, keeping the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation top of mind in general and during critical giving moments.
Congratulations once again to all the individuals behind these award-winning moments, movements, and milestones.