STOP Foundation 4education: STOP Award

The STOP Award was created to honor education providers that continued to perform for underserved families during Covid. While Covid is not the threat it once was, reversing the educational decline most students experienced in the past two years is an enormous undertaking. The mission of the STOP Awards today is to identify and support more best in class education providers who can tackle the challenges and deliver an education for students that is Sustainable, Transformational, Outstanding and Permissionless.

STOP is defined by four core principles that are at the heart of the Foundation’s mission because they have the power to drive educational change for every child.

• S: The work must be Sustainable over time, meaning it can be funded independently without continual philanthropy by utilizing public programs that fund the entity where students are learning, regardless of sector.
• T: The effort must be Transformational with innovative new approaches that employ 21st century knowledge and technologies, changing the way students are educated and rich in content that is relevant and impactful across all communities.
• O: Programs must be Outstanding, or demonstrably successful by every measure that matters. We know what success looks like from the demand of parents for better options for their children.
• P: The work requires no permission — Permissionless — and is free to exist and thrive without dependence on regulatory bodies whose rules are often at odds with parent demands and student needs.

Organizations must:

• Have actualized, initiated, and carried out a novel education approach between the months of September 2021 (or before) through today, in the United States, for Pre-K through 12th grade, including high schools with a career and college-readiness component.
• Be prepared to articulate a clear vision for how the $1 million STOP Award prize will help to expand impact to more students?
• Primarily focus on students in underserved communities.
• Support education freedom. Education freedom is defined as the right by law for parents and guardians to choose the school that best meets the needs of their students, whether it is public, public charter, microschool, home learning or any number of options that may exist, with the taxpayer funds allocated to educate students portable to the school of choice.
• The 32 semi-finalists must attend the Cohort Accelerator, which includes three weeks of zoom programming (roughly 2-3 hours of zoom sessions per week) and one week of in-person programming in November 2022. Expenses will be covered for the in-person programming by the STOP Award. During the accelerator, participants will be expected to submit weekly reflections and to prepare a “pitch” for delivery during the in-person programming.

Amount: $16,000,000 is available, including $9,000,000 for new awards and $5,000,000 for alumni grants and will including the prestigious $1 million Yass Prize to transform education, given to the group that most exemplifies the STOP 4 Education principles. Award breakdowns are not provided, however, if awards are similar to last year’s strategy:

• 26 semi-finalists will receive a $100,000 award
• 5 finalists will receive a $250,000 award
• 1 Yass Award Winner will receive a $1,000,000 award

Eligibility: US-based individuals or groups who serve K-12 students.

Link: https://stopforeducation.org/

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