Objective

In 2025, as negative headlines seemed to dominate our every day and nonprofits were forced to shy away from the spotlight, we at the Elevate Prize Foundation did the opposite. 

We leaned in. 

In fact, we doubled down on our commitment to Make Good Famous. 

Enter: Changemakers Should Be Front-Page News.

At Elevate, we believe social impact should be woven into the fabric of culture—visible, celebrated, and part of the air we breathe. This was the core vision of our campaign as we announced our fifth cohort of Elevate Prize winners in a 360 campaign. 

With this campaign, our goals were twofold: 

A) Create the headlines our winners deserve: Increase the visibility of our 10 new Elevate Prize winners by placing these incredible changemakers (and their world-changing impact) in unexpected, culturally-relevant places;

B) Show the world that impact isn’t a side story—it's a headline. At a time when negative headlines dominate, we can still recognize GOOD.

The results were beyond what we could have hoped. 

Strategy

At Elevate, we don’t think like “standard” social impact organizations in our sector. We want our winners to take center stage and we think pop culture-first, always aiming to meet audiences where they are. 

Every year, our goal is to go bigger and better with our Elevate Prize winners announcement. This year was no different.

From an early brainstorm, we identified a tension point in terms of where culture was: 

1. On the one hand, our sector was going through one of the worst moments ever. Not only were nonprofits forced to shy away from the spotlight — but funding cuts were real and beyond devastating. On top of it all, the GOOD work by changemakers and the nonprofits they run was missing from the headlines. 
2. On the other, for profit brands that were going viral (like Jacquemus, Rhode, Hootsuite and more) were going bolder and bigger than ever—literally. They were building their own giant products and reaching massive levels of engagement online. It was the era of offline and online intersections, but no nonprofits were joining the conversation. 

Our campaign was built as a result of both. 

After multiple collaborative conversations, we decided to create the headlines our winners deserve across key pillars: 

1. Our billboard: We went bigger and better with our Times Square billboard, first launched last year. This year, we chose one of the best locations, taking over Times Square’s iconic “The Cube” billboard with our bold and unapologetic message. In a place often reserved for celebrities and A-listers, we turned the spotlight toward those changing the world—disrupting expectations and redefining who deserves the public’s attention.
2. Unexpected collaborations: If you’re on Instagram, you have seen Dude With Sign. That’s why, for our campaign, we partnered with F Jerry’s viral platform @DudetteWithSign (850K followers) — Dude With Sign’s female counterpoint — for their first-ever collaboration with a nonprofit. This collaboration focused on bringing to the forefront messages we were ALL feeling at the time — particularly about not letting the bad news make you think there’s no good news that exists. This project brought our message into thousands of unexpected feeds outside of what algorithms usually allow for, creating cultural resonance beyond the typical nonprofit echo chamber. The response was immediate and emotional from hundreds of thousands of people, with comments like “Your post came at the right time,” and “We give the wrong people too much spotlight—nailed it!”  In addition, we also partnered with @GoodGoodGoodCo (400K followers), ensuring our winners’ stories reached an audience already leaning into optimism and action—while also introducing them to thousands of new people. 
3. Creating our own oversized newspaper: As mentioned, we wanted to tap into the oversized trend that is taking over consumer marketing—from Jacquemus to Hootsuite and Rhode and beyond. That’s where The Elevate Gazette came in: a massive, physical newspaper designed to give our winners the front-page headline they deserve. Shared both physically and digitally, it helped us be the first nonprofit to embrace the “oversized” trend. 

Results

This campaign was a success for both meeting our objectives but especially redefining what creativity looks like for nonprofits. 

The highlights: 

• Overall: 1,000,000+ total impressions, 60,244 engagements, and over 41,405 unique people engaged. 
• Our partnership with @DudetteWithSign not only was their first nonprofit partnership, but it truly resonated. Within a week, the post reached 665K+ views and 39K+ interactions, with 67% of views and 17% of interactions coming from non-followers, indicating that Instagram prioritized the content due to high engagement. The post also had ~6K shares and 1.4K+ saves, and the story reached 144K+ views and drove 900 interactions—all showing strong engagement.
• Our full take-over of Times Square’s iconic “The Cube” received 85,000 average impressions in a single hour. Three of our winners were there to witness it IRL, too, making the moment even more magical!  
• As the first nonprofit to tap into the ‘oversized’ trend, The Elevate Gazette was the creative culmination of our campaign. Audience sentiment was overwhelmingly positive, with reactions like “So dope!!! This is so great!” flooding our channels. 
• Our partnership with @GoodGoodGoodCo brought in an additional 33K views and 2.4K interactions, exposing our winners to an important donor community.
• Multiple assets were also released, including our announcement video which reached 235,000 views alone. 
• Last but not least, our campaign received important coverage on PRWeek about how brands were creating our own headlines—a crucial proof point. 

Our winners felt seen and heard—and we showed the world that social impact isn’t a side story; it’s the headline.

Media