Yankee Magazine Seeks 'Angels Among Us' Nominations for 2026

Yankee Magazine is taking nominations for its “Angels Among Us” series through May 15, 2026. Deadline’s firm.

The series has run for years across all six New England states, spotlighting ordinary people doing serious charitable work without waiting for anyone to hand them a budget or a title. We’re talking about the woman who’s been driving books to a reservation clinic for a decade, or the guy who built a veterans’ appreciation day out of personal guilt and never stopped. That’s the profile.

Nominations go to editors@yankeepub.com. You’ll need your own name, town, and state, the nominee’s name and location, their best contact information, and a 100-word description of why they deserve the attention. Keep it short. Keep it specific. Tell the story, not the emotion around it. Don’t write a paragraph about how inspiring someone is when you can just describe what they actually did.

Past honorees give you a clear picture of what the magazine’s looking for.

In 2017, Annemarie and Bruce Albiston of the Adaptive Outdoor Education Center were recognized for making the outdoors genuinely accessible to people with disabilities. The photo that ran alongside their feature was Donald Freeman of Bath, Maine, a return visitor to their program, holding a fishing rod with real concentration. No caption needed. That’s what the Albistons built.

Also from 2017, Blyth Lord of the Courageous Parents Network earned a spot in the series. Lord built an organization that connects parents of seriously ill children, people navigating some of the worst circumstances a family can face. It’s not glamorous work. It doesn’t come with applause.

The 2016 class included Roland Bousquet of Mexico, Maine, who channeled his guilt over not serving in Vietnam into something concrete: a monthly Veterans Appreciation Day in his hometown. It’s that kind of hyper-local, relentless commitment the series keeps finding. Also that year, Peter Berman and Marquis Taylor, co-founders of Coaching For Change, trained college students to lead programs inside local schools. “Kids step up to the plate when they’re given responsibility,” Taylor said. He wasn’t wrong, and the numbers backed it up.

Going back to 2015, David Cote built The Summit Project, a Maine nonprofit preserving memories of fallen service members. Nancy Cayford of Friends of the Oglala Lakota had been collecting and donating books to schools and medical clinics on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, a route that started with one woman in one town deciding she could do something.

New England isn’t short on this. Never has been. The region’s towns are small enough that one person who won’t quit can change the whole character of a place, and the “Angels Among Us” series has documented exactly that across hundreds of profiles.

Nominations close May 15, 2026. The 100-word limit isn’t a suggestion. Editors aren’t looking for sentiment. They’re looking for the specific, honest detail that proves someone actually showed up, kept showing up, and made something real out of the effort.