The archive · PR & Stunts · Marketing decision · 2025
New Women New Yorkers' #DonateYourBio lends headlines to immigrant women — Webby winner
A nonprofit asks professionals to donate their LinkedIn headlines for Giving Tuesday, turning self-promotion into visibility for immigrant women.
New Women New Yorkers
What it had to solve
New Women New Yorkers, a nonprofit that has spent a decade helping immigrant women in New York City build careers through workforce development, education and storytelling, has supported more than 2,000 women. Its leaders recognized that no program succeeds without professional networks — the exact thing immigrant women often lack — and for Giving Tuesday the organization needed visibility and donations on a nonprofit budget.
How it works
New Women New Yorkers has helped immigrant women in New York City build careers for a decade, running workforce development, education and storytelling programs that have reached more than 2,000 women. But the nonprofit's founder, Arielle Kandel, kept coming back to one insight: behind every great career is someone who opened a door, and professional networks are the doors immigrant women are often locked out of.
For Giving Tuesday 2025, the organization asked for something its supporters had never been asked to give: their LinkedIn bios. Working with the independent agency Terri & Sandy, it launched #DonateYourBio, inviting executives and influencers to temporarily swap their headlines for ones that spotlighted immigrant women and the organization's work — flipping LinkedIn's self-promotional culture into a collective act of visibility.
Why it lands
- A headline swap is a donation anyone can make, removing money as the barrier to helping.
- Each borrowed bio put the cause in front of a professional network the nonprofit could never afford to reach.
- Executives lending their status made the campaign newsworthy, earning coverage LBB and other outlets.
- The mechanic criticized LinkedIn's self-promotional culture while using it as intended, which made the message travel.
What it did
The mechanism turned every participant's own headline and network into the media buy: a coordinated wave of borrowed bios, each one an endorsement visible to recruiters. The campaign won the Webby Award for Best Use of Social Media in Media Campaigns at the 30th annual Webbys (2026), and was covered internationally as a way to give without money.
What you can take
Donation appeals compete in a crowded feed, but lending status instead of money spreads through the very professional networks a cause needs to reach.
Since then
The coordinated takeover ran through Giving Tuesday, December 2, 2025, supporting the organization's end-of-year giving goal. Coverage of the idea spread through advertising and marketing press, and in April 2026 the campaign was honored with the Webby Award for Best Use of Social Media in the Media Campaigns category, giving a small nonprofit a format other causes could copy: an earned-media campaign whose only real cost is a participant's willingness to lend their headline.
Sources
- How LinkedIn Bios Can Open Doors for Immigrant Women
- Profesionales transforman sus perfiles de LinkedIn para impulsar el crecimiento laboral de mujeres inmigrantes
- The advertising, media, and PR award winners from the 30th annual Webby Awards
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