Unlocking Your Potential: The Taco Bell Foundation Scholarship
For a decade, the Taco Bell Foundation has been dedicated to fueling the dreams of students pursuing higher education by distributing scholarships to employees and Taco Bell fans. Celebrating this significant milestone, Taco Bell has pledged a record-breaking $14 million in scholarships for the upcoming application cycle. Fastweb members have discovered this opportunity, applied, and even emerged as winners. These accomplished individuals contribute to the $64 million legacy that Taco Bell has invested in the next generation.
This year, Taco Bell will award scholarships ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 per recipient. These scholarships can be renewed for up to four years.
Types of Live Más Scholarships
The Taco Bell Foundation offers several scholarship opportunities:
- Live Más Scholarship: This opportunity is open to anyone. Scholarships are awarded based on passion, social impact, personal presentation, and educational goals.
- Live Más Scholarship for Restaurant Employees: This scholarship is awarded based on the above considerations; however, you must also be a Taco Bell employee to apply. Of the $14 million in scholarships available in 2025, $4.5 million is being reserved exclusively for Taco Bell employees.
- Live Más Scholarship Renewal: This award is open to all previous Live Más Scholarship winners. It allows them the chance to renew their scholarship for another year. These can be renewed up to four times.
Eligibility Criteria
To be eligible for the Live Más Scholarship, applicants must be between 16 and 26 years old. Additionally, applicants must be enrolled or planning to enroll in an accredited post-secondary program. This can be a two- or four-year degree from a community college, college, vocational-technical, or trade school. The Live Más Scholarship for employees requires that applicants be employed at a Taco Bell restaurant. Finally, applicants for the Renewal Scholarship must be previous winners in addition to the above requirements.
Application Process
Applying for the Live Más Scholarship is designed to be a quick and easy process. It is recommended to set a reminder to apply for the Live Más Scholarship in late fall.
Read also: Unlock Your Potential with Live Más
Success Stories: Siena Laws and Matthew Sugiyama
This year, Taco Bell distributed approximately 1,000 Live Más Scholarships. Siena Laws and Matthew Sugiyama were chosen as scholarship winners because they put their passion into action.
Siena is a high school senior in California, who applied to the Live Mas Scholarship after seeing it advertised on social media. Throughout her whole life, she has loved firefighting, so much that she joined her community’s Explorer Program in high school. Now, she plans to major in nursing at Texas A&M. Receiving the scholarship has dramatically changed the way she will pay for college. She says, “Before receiving the scholarship, I would’ve had to work a lot during college and possibly take out loans to bridge the gap in tuition between and out-of-state and in-state colleges. Many students hesitate to apply for video scholarships, but Siena found the process quick and easy.
Matthew Sugiyama was another recipient of the Live Más Scholarship, and his passion his personal. His grandmother was a victim of fraud through a senior scam, losing her entire life savings, and Matthew has made it his mission to spread awareness of this issue and eliminate it through public policy. He plans to attend the University of Michigan, and since he is from the San Francisco area, he would need to pay out-of-state tuition. With the Live Más Scholarship, his college education has become affordable.
Matthew knows what it takes to win and act with passion. His advice for scholarship searchers is: “Just go for it. What do you have to lose? Even if you start with a Google search and one application, you’re already ahead.
Funding the Future: The Round Up Program
The Taco Bell Foundation sponsors the annual Live Más Scholarship, one of several initiatives to give back to the community. It also sponsors community grants and educational programming in and around cities and towns that are home to a Taco Bell restaurant.
Read also: Unlocking Scholarship Potential
Funds are collected for the Live Más Scholarship, community grants, and educational programming through the Round Up Program. This campaign occurs at the checkout of each Taco Bell transaction, asking customers if they would like to round-up their payment to the nearest dollar to contribute to the foundation. The average donation is just 44 cents, but that is enough to award millions of dollars to students and communities around the country each year. If you are a Taco Bell customer, don’t forget to round up your purchases. It helps send world changers, like Siena and Matthew, to college.
Read also: Inside the Taco Bell Internship Program
tags: #Taco #Bell #Foundation #Scholarship #eligibility
