Prize Laureate Aisha Nyandoro Named 2026 Elevate Prize Winner

"The Elevate Prize Foundation, a global nonprofit on a mission to Make Good Famous, announced the winners of its sixth annual Elevate Prize, awarding over $6M in grants and services to 10 social changemakers working to strengthen communities and expand opportunity at a critical moment.

Winner Aisha Nyandoro, PhD, is the founding CEO of Springboard to Opportunities, a Jackson, Mississippi–based nonprofit known for its radically resident-driven approach to ending generational poverty. In 2018, she launched the Magnolia Mother’s Trust, the nation’s first guaranteed income program for single Black mothers.

What began as a small pilot has since supported hundreds of families and helped position Aisha as a leading national voice in the movement for guaranteed income and economic justice. Her work helped inspire cash distributions during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. She is also the co-founder and co-chair of the Guaranteed Income Community of Practice, which brings together policy experts, advocates, researchers, funders, practitioners, and elected officials to advance unconditional cash programs

Raised in a family of activists, Aisha grew up at a dining table that doubled as a roundtable—where community issues were debated, and solutions imagined collectively. The Magnolia Mother’s Trust grew from those same kinds of conversations; repeatedly, mothers connected to her work said they didn’t need more programs, requirements, or forms. They needed cash—and the freedom to decide what their families needed most. Inspired by a deep belief in people’s wisdom and by Lucille Clifton’s idea of making beauty from 'starshine and clay,' Aisha built the Trust on a simple but radical premise: when families are trusted, they thrive. Through her work, Aisha challenges dominant narratives about poverty and power, confronting the racialized and gendered assumptions that shape public policy and public opinion."