Nonprofits to share $137 million from MacKenzie Scott
When a nonprofit serving L.A.’s homeless population and foster youths applied last year for a slice of billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott’s latest round of giving, it hoped to get $1 million.
Instead, the team at Youth Emerging Stronger learned this week it was one of almost 300 community groups nationwide to be awarded $2 million.
“It doubled the amount that we were hoping for,” said Mark Supper, chief executive and president of Youth Emerging Stronger, adding that they were “a bit dumbfounded by it, but we’re so happy.”
Scott, who co-founded Amazon with her now exhusband, Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, donated $640 million to more than 350 community groups nationwide, more than doubling the amount she initially planned to give, according to Yield Giving, Scott’s website. Of that, $137 million went to 76 organizations serving Californians. The majority received $2 million, but about 80 organizations received $1 million. Supper’s nonprofit was among 25 Southern California groups that shared $47 million.
“For us, it’s a transformational kind of gift,” Supper said. “It allows us to really think long term in our strategies and our approaches.”
Supper said his team was still working on specific plans for how to use the money. But he said it will definitely focus on expanding housing and mental health services for the vulnerable youths age 12 to 24 whom it serves.
More than 6,000 applicants responded to Scott’s open call for “communityled, community-focused organizations whose explicit purpose is to advance the voices and opportunities of individuals and families of meager or modest means, and groups who have met with discrimination and other systemic obstacles.”
Among other Southern California awardees are the LGBTQ Center in Long Beach; environmental justice group Pacoima Beautiful; Reality Changers, a San Diego group working with first-generation college students; the California Native Vote Project, which advocates for the Native American community; and Achievable Health, which provides healthcare to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
“We were just jumping up and down with joy when we heard this was happening,” said Carmen Ibarra, the chief executive of Achievable Health, based in Culver City.
“It comes at just the right time,” she said, as the organization’s community health center is working on plans to expand to provide services to more people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, who she said are “often underserved and overlooked in healthcare.”
This round of donations follows many others from Scott, who has pledged to donate more than half of her wealth, which is estimated at about $32 billion, according to Forbes. Scott has typically given to organizations without an application process, but this time she worked with philanthropic group Lever for Change to analyze the thousands of applicants.
“Grateful to Lever for Change and everyone on the evaluation and implementation teams for their roles in creating this pathway to support for people working to improve access to foundational resources in their communities,” Scott wrote on her website Tuesday.