Mott Million Dollar Challenge for Kids & Teens – Feb 27

Posted by Charles Stewart Mott Foundation on January 20, 2026

The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation is excited to announce the Mott Million Dollar Challenge: A Pitch Competition for Kids & Teens, a national opportunity for young people in grades K–12 across the United States. This national youth pitch competition, funded by the Mott Foundation, is open to K–12 students across the United States and celebrates bold ideas that make life better.

Mott has partnered with leaders in the field to make this project a reality, including the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, Young Entrepreneur Institute, VentureLab, Afterschool Alliance and Collaborative Communications. We are proud to support this project and create opportunities for young people to shine as leaders, problem solvers, and innovators through entrepreneurial thinking.

How Youth Can Participate

Young people are invited to:

• Identify a problem they care about.
• Create a business idea or social solution.
• Submit a 30–90 second video pitch — simple, straight-to-camera, no special equipment required.

Youth can participate:

• Individually or in teams of up to three.
• In grade bands K–4, 5–8, and 9–12.
• From any learning environment — school-day, afterschool, summer, community-based programs, or homeschool.

Key Dates

• Submission deadline: Feb. 27, 2026
• Finalists announced: Spring 2026
• Final celebration and live pitch event: June 2026, in Flint, Michigan

Getting Engaged

The challenge is intentionally designed to be:

• Accessible and low-barrier, even in low-resource settings.
• Aligned with STEM, entrepreneurship, college and career readiness, and positive youth development.
• A powerful affirmation of youth voice, creativity, and confidence.

You don’t need to create your own campaign, just lift and layer what works best for your audience. To make sharing easy, you can go to the Mott Million Dollar Challenge website where the team has created several resources to help your organization, educators, youth and their parents participate, including:

• A plug-and-play communications toolkit.
• Lessons and activities.
• Pitch preparation materials.
• Visit Mizzen.org for even more resources.

Take the Mott Million Dollar Challenge.