Freedom Institute Named a Contender for the 2026 Yass Prize Alumni Award

NAPLES, Fla., Aug. 25, 2026. The Freedom Institute of Collier County has been named a contender for the 2026 Yass Prize Alumni Award, returning to a national competition it first entered as a two-year-old school.

The Center for Education Reform announced the 2026 cohort on August 12, naming 26 education innovators as contenders for the $1 million Yass Prize and selecting 12 Yass Prize alumni for the Alumni Awards Program. The Freedom Institute, a 2024 Yass Prize semifinalist, is among the twelve.

The Alumni Award exists to give past honorees resources to deepen and scale work that already reflects the prize’s four principles: Sustainable, Transformational, Outstanding and Permissionless education.

“We did not set out to build a good school. We set out because too many students were sitting in classrooms where nobody had ever asked them what they actually wanted from their lives. Being asked back to make that case in front of this group is a privilege.”

Christopher Marker, CEO, The Freedom Institute

Contenders now enter a multi-week accelerator. Virtual sessions with national education leaders, innovators and practitioners run through the weeks of August 24 and August 31. Those are followed by an in-person accelerator in Miami from September 15 to 17, where Freedom Institute leadership will have four minutes to present the school’s proposal to a panel of judges. The winner is announced October 6 at the Power of Innovation Summit in Philadelphia.

Freedom’s proposal, titled “Freedom Multiplied,” requests $1 million to scale a model the school has now built three times. The largest single share, $500,000, would go to hiring and training Success Coaches, the one-to-one mentors at the center of the model. The remainder would support the school’s online and on-demand programs, enrollment outreach, and scholarships that close tuition gaps for families, along with groundwork toward a fourth Florida location.

The request rests on growth that has already happened rather than growth that is promised. Freedom opened in 2023 with 22 students and enrolled 142 last year. This fall it has 197 across Naples, Ave Maria and Freedom Anywhere, a 39 percent increase in a single year, and it carries no debt. With full funding, the school projects roughly 550 students within three years.

The past year has been the busiest in the school’s history. The Freedom Institute opened its Ave Maria campus, expanded its Freedom AI program on the strength of a $1 million grant, was named a 2026 Edison Awards nominee, received the 2026 SWFL Inc. Innovation Award and a 2026 Global Recognition Award, and saw junior Lauren Sharp become the only student from Florida honored in America’s Field Trip 2026, ringing the Opening Bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

“Freedom does not treat high school as something to survive. Our students graduate having already worked, already failed at something, already found out what they actually want. That is what we are asking the Yass Prize to help us give to more of them.”

Nathan Poteet, Executive Director of Programs & AI

The Yass Prize was founded by Janine and Jeff Yass in partnership with the Center for Education Reform to identify and fund education providers working outside conventional models. In announcing the 2026 cohort, CER founder and chief executive Jeanne Allen said the group’s leaders are demonstrating that education cannot be uniform and must work for every child.

Families can follow the school’s progress through the accelerator, including updates from Miami in September and Philadelphia in October, at freedominstitute.net/yass-2026.