Scott gifts $640M to 361 nonprofits
Billionaire more than doubles her planned donations, many to groups in California
Billionaire philanthropist and author MacKenzie Scott announced Tuesday she is giving $640 million to 361 small nonprofits that responded to an open call for applications.
Yield Giving's first round of donations is more than double what Scott had initially pledged to give away through the application process. Since she began giving away billions in 2019, Scott and her team have researched and selected organizations without an application process and provided them with large, unrestricted gifts. Dozens of recipients are in California.
In a brief note on her website, Scott wrote she was grateful to Lever for Change, the organization that managed the open call, and the evaluators for “their roles in creating this pathway to support for people working to improve access to foundational resources in their communities. They are vital agents of change.”
The increase in both the award amount and the number of organizations who were selected is “a pleasant surprise,” said Elisha
Smith Arrillaga, vice president at The Center for Effective Philanthropy. She is interested to learn more about the applicants' experience of the process and whether Scott continues to use this process going forward.
Some 6,353 nonprofits applied to the $1 million grants when applications opened.
“The donor team decided to expand the awardee pool and the award amount,” said Lever for Change, which specializes in running philanthropic prize awards.
The 279 nonprofits that received top scores from an external review panel were awarded $2 million, while 82 organizations in a second tier received $1 million each.
Competitions like Scott's open call can help organizations who do not have connections with a specific funder get considered, said Renee Karibi-Whyte, senior vice president, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.
“One of the best things about prize philanthropy is that it surfaces people and organizations and institutions that otherwise wouldn't have access to the people in the power centers and the funding,” she said. Her organization also advises funders who run competitive grants or philanthropic prize competitions to phase the application to diminish the burden of applying on any organization that is eliminated early.
Megan Peterson, executive director of the Minnesota-based nonprofit, Gender Justice, said the application was a rare opportunity to get noticed by Scott.
“Having seen the types of work that she has supported in the past, we did feel like, `Oh, if only she knew that we were out here racking up wins,'” said Peterson. The open call asked for applications from nonprofits who are community-led with missions “to advance the voices and opportunities of individuals and families of meager or modest means,” Yield Giving said on its website. Only nonprofits with annual budgets between $1 and $5 million were eligible to apply.
The awardees were selected through a multilayer process, where applicants scored fellow applicants and then the top organizations were reviewed by a panel of outside experts.
Scott has given away $16.5 billion from the fortune she came into after divorcing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. She launched a database of her giving in December 2022, under the name Yield Giving.