📺 NYC Summit 2026: Building CSR Programs That Earn Attention and Action

Purpose That Performs: Building CSR Programs That Earn Attention and Action
Hilary Smith, NBCUniversal

This week's session is a masterclass in turning a company's core strength into genuine social impact — and making it work for the business at the same time. Hilary Smith walked us through how NBCUniversal built its Creative Impact Lab from the ground up, and the five-step roadmap she used to make it stick.

👉 Watch the full keynote

Here are a few highlights worth watching for:

Start with what you're uniquely great at: IBM leads with AI. Nike gets kids moving. LinkedIn focuses on workforce development. NBCUniversal's superpower is storytelling — and 77% of nonprofits cite communications as their biggest organizational challenge. The match was obvious once they looked inward. The lesson: your best CSR strategy is already hiding inside your business.

Make employees the centre of it: Hilary turned volunteering into a genuine perk — complete with a "Creative Council" title that employees could add to their LinkedIn profiles. She also ran a division-by-division contest letting employees nominate nonprofits they cared about. The result wasn't just better engagement — it became one of the most effective ways to communicate the initiative internally, reaching thousands of employees who hadn't heard about it yet.

Hook onto cultural moments to scale: The Wicked film tie-in. The 2024 Olympics. America's 250th birthday. Hilary's point is simple — you don't need NBCUniversal's platform to do this. Mother's Day, Giving Tuesday, and local milestones all work. Attach your initiative to a moment people already care about and you borrow its momentum.

Awards do more than you think: Even a second-place finish earns you "award-winning" in your boilerplate. And every judge reading your submission is someone learning about your programme for the first time. Hilary's advice: submit widely, and don't fixate on the gold.

Measure it and own the story: 550 million impressions from PSAs in 2025 alone. Over $28 million in donated commercial airtime. If you're not publishing an annual impact report for your CSR initiative, you're leaving proof points on the table — and missing a powerful content and social asset in the process.

Best line of the session: "Copycats are welcome." Hilary genuinely wants other brands to replicate this model — and is actively looking for corporate partners whose nonprofit clients need help with storytelling. If that's you, this one's worth watching in full.