The Global Citizen-PayPal Small Business Impact Awards 2026 for creative small and medium-sized business owners (20K cash prize)

Application Deadline: July 19, 2026 at 8:00 PM ET

Applications at the moment are open for the 2026 Global Citizen-PayPal Small Business Impact Awards. The Global Citizen and PayPal Small Business Impact Awards had been established to help business owners and founders who’re driving actual impression of their communities by demonstrating a deep dedication to fairness and sustainability of their business practices. We are trying for creative small and medium-sized business owners who’ve developed modern merchandise and companies to make a constructive social or environmental impression.

The awards platform will grant these groundbreaking small- and medium-sized companies a 20K cash prize and join them to information and insights, technical coaching, and advertising and marketing/model activations to speed up their work and impression.

Eligibility Criteria

• Active Business Leader
  Be the proprietor, founder or CEO that performs an important function within the present business.
• Online Presence
  Have a web based presence that enables your prospects to purchase your product. 
• Small-to-Medium Sized Business
  The business have to be categorized as a small-medium-sized business, sometimes with fewer than 50 full-time workers or annual income below $1 million (topic to native laws and requirements). 
• Demonstrate Community Impact
  The business must have 1-5 years of impression of their neighborhood. 
  The business ought to exhibit vital, tangible contributions to the area people. This might embody, however is just not restricted to:
  • Supporting native causes, charities, or nonprofit organizations. 
  • Engaging in neighborhood growth tasks or native partnerships. 
  • Implementing sustainable practices that profit the native atmosphere or economic system. 
  • Creating jobs or offering instructional/coaching Opportunities for neighborhood members. 

• Location
  The business have to be primarily based in considered one of these areas:  North America,  Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Latin America
• Exclusions:
  • The business should not be affiliated with a corporation from any nation or entity topic to monetary or different sanctions by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) or different authorities entity of the United States of America that will limit the switch of the Award 
  • The business should not be a franchise or part of a nationwide or worldwide chain, as the main focus is on unbiased, regionally owned enterprises. 
  • You should reside and work in North America,  Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Latin America to be eligible.  

Evaluation Criteria

Innovation
How your business’s innovation helps your mission and creates a constructive societal or environmental impression.

📋 Vision
Compelling imaginative and prescient and concrete plans for learn how to develop this work within the subsequent 3-5 years.

Impact
Demonstrated track-record of measurable impression the final 3-5 years, advancing a number of of the Global Goals.

For More Information:

Visit the Official Webpage of the Global Citizen-PayPal Small Business Impact Awards