The Mott Foundation’s giving is here for good
A new year provides opportunity for both reflecting on the past and looking toward the future. As the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation enters 2026, this contemplation carries extra meaning as we celebrate our first 100 years of giving and embark on our second century of work.
My great-grandfather, C.S. Mott, was an early automotive pioneer and, to this day, still the person who served longest on General Motors’ board of directors. In 1926, he endowed the Foundation that bears his name with an initial gift of $320,000 in GM stock. He did so out of concern for his adopted home community of Flint, Michigan. He felt sure that establishing a foundation that could operate in perpetuity would yield more benefit for the greater good than a one-time tax payment to the government on those assets.
And he was right.
From 1926 through 2025, the Mott Foundation granted more than $4.4 billion to support charitable efforts. Adjusted for inflation, the figure would be more than $9 billion in today’s dollars. With an asset base of roughly $4 billion at year’s end, that means we’ve given away more than double the worth of our current assets.
What has C.S. Mott’s foresight done for the Foundation’s hometown of Flint and communities around the world? Here are just a few of the highlights:
- We partnered with the federal government to help launch and expand 21st Century Community Learning Centers. At its height, the initiative provided more than 1.7 million children annually with access to high-quality afterschool learning opportunities at 11,000 sites. We also support a 50 State Afterschool Network that aims to ensure all kids and families who want afterschool programs will have access to them.
- In the Great Lakes region, we’ve helped to protect more than 460,000 acres of ecologically sensitive sites, more than 1,100 miles of inland lake and river shorelines, and 64 miles of shoreline on the Great Lakes, which provide drinking water to more than 40 million people and serve as the lifeblood of a $6 trillion regional economy. Today, we’re working to advance “one-water” solutions to ensure all people in the U.S. have access to clean, safe, affordable water — from the source to the tap.
- From just 2019-2025, Mott’s grantmaking helped more than 3 million people in Ukraine and targeted countries in Africa gain access to justice services to help resolve issues they face. Over the same time period, nearly 20,000 people in Africa received paralegal training, and over 1,200 community justice organizations benefited from organizational development support.
- Perhaps most important, the Mott Foundation was still here 90 years after our founding to help when the Flint water crisis hit our hometown, causing a population-wide exposure to lead in tap water. We granted more than $116 million specifically to help Flint recover and rise from the crisis. Since our founding, we’ve granted more than $1.6 billion in support for our home community, or more than $3.8 billion when adjusted for inflation.
These are just a handful of examples from each of our grantmaking programs. For more on our impact over our first 100 years, I invite you to explore the new centennial section of our website. There, you’ll find content about our flagship areas of work thus far, a timeline of major grants and milestones, and 100 Voices sharing stories of impact.
You also might notice a new look for the Foundation. We’ve updated our logo to reflect C.S. Mott’s belief that every individual exists in a kind of partnership with his or her community. At the Mott Foundation, we think of this as a virtuous cycle. When individuals succeed and give back, their community flourishes. And when a community is strong and prosperous, it creates more opportunities for the people who live and work there. The success of each strengthens the other.
Working in partnership with communities, from our hometown of Flint to communities around the world, is also core to the Foundation’s approach to all of our grantmaking. We hope our new look conveys this concept of partnership and of reaching out to others — often across issues and differences — to build common ground and contribute to the greater good.
Our approach and the work we support represent what foundations are built for: helping communities to embrace opportunities and weather their worst challenges. While I believe there’s room and need for every form of charitable giving, Mott’s grantmaking and our experiences over our first century clearly underscore the value and need for giving in perpetuity.
C.S. Mott anticipated that need. It’s why he created a governance structure for our foundation that would allow it to address evolving needs across decades and centuries.
To that end, Mott Foundation trustees, staff, grantees and partners have done a lot of thinking, research and work over the past two years that has helped inform a new strategic program plan to guide the first decade of our second century of work. The plan represents an evolution of our existing work with an emphasis on innovation. It provides a renewed opportunity to interpret and carry forward our founder’s vision in a rapidly changing world.
Of utmost importance, the plan is mission driven. We’ve identified how each initiative under our four grantmaking programs will contribute to one or more pillars of the Foundation’s mission: promoting a just, equitable and sustainable society.
We’ll still do our grantmaking through four programs, though one has a new name.
- Our Flint Area program connects people, ideas and resources to foster a vibrant and inclusive community. We intend to allocate roughly 60% of our total annual grantmaking budget to the program, which seeks to be transformative in our hometown. Informed by significant and consistent input from community members, the new plan brings more focus to our grantmaking, with big initiatives on education and housing, as well as concentrated work on reducing childhood poverty, increasing economic prosperity and strengthening community vitality.
- Our newly named Youth Engagement program expands opportunities that empower young people to reach their full potential in school, work and life. New and existing initiatives will continue to broaden young people’s access to diverse and meaningful learning opportunities. We’ll work to increase access to and participation in afterschool and summer learning programs, entrepreneurship and children’s savings accounts. Together, these efforts will help more kids and teens build knowledge, develop skills, nurture aspirations, and connect with their schools and communities, creating conditions for all young people to flourish.
- Our Civil Society program remains committed to fostering engaged, empowered and equitable communities around the world. Through our support for community foundations in the U.S., Africa and Latin America, we aim to bridge divides and build common ground at the local level. We’ll work in Africa, Latin America and globally to help people access knowledge and tools to understand, use and shape the law to protect their rights and improve their lives. At the same time, we’ll remain steadfast in our commitment to protecting the nonprofit and philanthropic sector and advancing the rights of citizens and communities — both in the U.S. and globally.
- Our Environment program aims to support people working together to advance appropriate models of development that foster ecologically sustainable communities and protect nature. The program will maintain our deep commitment to the Great Lakes while expanding nationally to help assure water is clean, safe and affordable for all. We’ll continue our longstanding and impactful engagement on international finance with a sharper focus on the clean energy transition. And we’ll deepen our work in the Amazon, emphasizing the importance of land tenure, forest conservation and thriving communities.
In the coming weeks and months, we’ll announce specific grants under each of our programs. But here’s the big takeaway: From 2026 through 2035, the Mott Foundation intends to grant a total of up to $2 billion to support charitable efforts. Major areas of focus will include:
- Up to $370 million to support education in Flint, from early childhood through postsecondary education. This will include up to $100 million for school facilities.
- Up to $100 million to reduce childhood poverty in Flint.
- Up to $200 million to support youth engagement at the national level.
- Up to $100 million to advance one-water solutions — efforts to ensure clean, safe, affordable water for all from the source to the tap. This work will have both a Great Lakes and a national focus.
- Up to $40 million to support access to justice globally.
I invite you to visit our website and follow us on social media to stay up to date on our grantmaking throughout our centennial year and beyond.
The Mott Foundation is proud that we’ve been here for 100 years, working alongside our hometown of Flint and with communities around the world, and partnering with businesses and governments at all levels to make good things happen. To all who have been and will be part of that work, I offer the Foundation’s deepest thanks.
Through times of peace and prosperity — as well as world wars, natural disasters and manmade crises — the Mott Foundation has been able provide support to help communities chart their paths forward. We’ve provided grants for children’s hospitals, schools, afterschool programs, clean water, food banks, arts and cultural institutions, legal services and so much more. And we intend to continue doing this work for centuries to come.
At the Mott Foundation, we believe giving is here for good. And so are we.
Related Posts