The Freedom Institute is one of twelve Yass Prize alumni competing for the 2026 Alumni Award. This page follows the whole run, from the first virtual session to the announcement in Philadelphia.
The Yass Prize Alumni Award is intended to provide dedicated alumni with resources to deepen and scale their impact in alignment with the principles of Sustainable, Transformational, Outstanding, and Permissionless education.
The Freedom Institute was named a Yass Prize semifinalist in 2024, in only our second year. On August 12, 2026, the Center for Education Reform named 26 education innovators as contenders for the $1 million Yass Prize and selected 12 alumni for the Alumni Awards Program. We are one of the twelve.
A tuition and grant model built to run without a single donor holding it up, now across three programs.
Students graduate having already worked, interned, earned credentials, and in many cases changed their minds about what they want.
A 2026 Edison Awards nominee, SWFL Inc. Innovation Award winner, and Global Recognition Award recipient in a single year.
Freedom AI, Freedom Anywhere, and the Ave Maria campus were all built without waiting for anyone to approve the idea first.
Our proposal is called Freedom Multiplied, and the request is $1 million. Not to open a building, and not to run a pilot. To buy the one thing that actually limits how many students we can serve: people.
Hiring and training Success Coaches. Every Freedom student has one. It is the most expensive part of the model and the reason it works, and it is the first thing that breaks if we grow carelessly.
Enrollment pipeline and outreach, so families who would choose this actually find out it exists.
Freedom Anywhere, Freedom On Demand, and the AI and curriculum systems behind them. This is how we reach students that geography would otherwise rule out.
Scholarships and tuition-gap support, for families whose state funding does not fully close the distance.
A further $500,000 in matching philanthropy would go toward launching a fourth Florida location, bringing the full project to $1.5 million.
Freedom opened in 2023 with 22 students. We enrolled 142 last year. We have 197 right now, across Naples, Ave Maria and Freedom Anywhere, and we carry no debt. Full funding is the difference between roughly 340 students in three years and roughly 550.
The Center for Education Reform announces the 2026 cohort. The Freedom Institute is one of twelve alumni selected for the Alumni Awards Program.
A working session with Building Hope and CER to sharpen the funding request before the accelerator begins.
Sessions with national education leaders, innovators, and practitioners, aimed at tightening the proposal and the pitch behind it.
Three days in Miami with fellow alumni, mentors, and judges. Freedom presents its case in four minutes on Thursday morning.
Winners announced in Philadelphia.
Freedom CEO Chris Marker is also a named speaker at the summit, on a program that includes Governor Ron DeSantis, Yass Prize founders Janine and Jeff Yass, Governor Kim Reynolds, Joe Lonsdale and Michael Smerconish. See the full speaker list.
The case we are bringing to Miami is not a plan. It is two years of work that already happened.
“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.”
Christopher Marker, CEO and Co-FounderThis page gets updated after each stage, including photos and results from Miami and Philadelphia.
