MacKenzie Scott’s quest to give the bulk of her wealth to charity continues. So far this year, 24 nonprofits have announced that they received unrestricted donations from Scott through her Yield Giving fund, according to a Chronicle tally. The gifts total $146 million and range from $1 million to $15 million. Nearly half went to charities focused on early-childhood education and early-childhood development.
She also gave to nonprofits that work to strengthen maternal health and combat infant mortality, create affordable housing, provide human services to families and children in need, fight poverty, and award scholarships to neurodiverse youths. Including her latest donations, Scott has now given more than $14.1 billion to at least 1,628 charities since 2020.
To encourage philanthropy watchers to focus on the charities she supports rather than on her, Scott decided to stop announcing large numbers of donations as she had in the past. Now she leaves it up to the charities to decide whether to publicize her gifts. Given the scale of her giving in previous years, it is likely the 24 announced contributions represent only a small portion of what she has actually donated so far this year.
‘Vote of Confidence’
Leaders of recipient organizations say they appreciate Scott’s decision to let nonprofits choose whether to publicize the gifts. They see it as part of her “trust-based” approach to giving because it lets nonprofit leaders decide what is best for a charity’s operations, mission, and the people the organization serves.
“For us, it was in our best interest to announce this donation and to share the victory with our peers in the movement,” says Sean McCarthy, who manages donor relations at the National Housing Trust. The affordable-housing group landed a $10 million gift from Scott last month, its largest donation to date. “We view this gift as a vote of confidence.”
Still, he says, the decision to announce the contribution publicly was not made lightly. There were pros and cons to consider. McCarthy says that he and other trust officials wanted to announce the gift to show the public and other donors that a high-profile philanthropist like Scott has faith in the trust’s mission and in its ability to manage a gift of that size.
They discussed the potential downsides to publicizing it, too. Chief among them: concerns that other donors would think Scott’s gift provided the trust with all it needs to carry out its mission, which McCarthy says is decidedly not the case.
Scott’s public giving so far this year focuses on child development, maternal health, and other causes.
“The reality is that this is a very large problem that we’re trying to solve. There’s a shortage of over 7 million affordable homes here in the United States alone, and so when we decided to publish this, we wanted to ensure that we weren’t sharing that we now have all the resources we need to pursue our mission,” McCarthy says. “We’re still in need of support from a variety of sources to advance our programs, and this gift, while transformative, is just one step in the right direction.”
Patricia Lozano, executive director of Early Edge California, an early-childhood education advocacy group, says her team had similar reasons for wanting to publicize the $3 million gift the organization received this summer.
“It was a win for Early Edge to be recognized, and it’s the first time in our history that we got a gift of this size,” Lozano says. “So for us, it was a recognition of our work and for all our successes. Our work is very specifically around advocacy, so we thought it would be a good thing for us to show our funders and possible partners that we’re trusted and recognized for our work.”
She says her organization didn’t spend a lot of time debating whether to publicize the donation from Scott because the gift was such an affirmation of trust from a major donor. Lozano says while there is always concern about other supporters pulling back, a donation like Scott’s can also inspire donors to give because they see a respected philanthropist throwing her support behind the nonprofit. They see a significant gift as proof that contributing to such a nonprofit is a worthy investment.
Transparency vs. Privacy
Scott launched Yield Giving’s website in December to answer the nonprofit world’s call for more transparency. The site lists the names of the groups that have received gifts, and in some cases the amount she gave them. The site hasn’t been updated to show any of the 2023 donations so it is unclear exactly how many gifts she has made this year. That has left the philanthropy world in the dark about what to make of Scott’s latest donations.
“MacKenzie Scott has every right to shape her grant-making mission and strategy, and I understand her desire to stay out of the spotlight and put the spotlight on her grantees. But the reality is that philanthropy as a whole would benefit from more knowledge about the organizations that are getting the grants and why they’re getting them,” says Joanne Florino, a Philanthropy Roundtable official who advises donors and foundations. “I wish she and her consultants would share a little bit more of that because it might influence foundations and individual donors about the kinds of assets or policies or programs they should be looking for, what’s effective and what’s not, and why certain organizations were selected and what kind of promise they saw there.”
Philanthropy as a whole would benefit from more knowledge about the organizations that are getting the grants.
There has always been a certain amount of tension and debate surrounding transparency and privacy in the philanthropy world, says Katherina Rosqueta, who leads the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for High Impact Philanthropy.
Some wealthy donors give anonymously because they want to preserve their privacy and, like Scott, want the focus to be on the work of the nonprofit they are supporting. Other philanthropists are willing to forgo a certain amount of privacy because they know attaching their name to a large donation encourages their peers to support that charity or cause.
Scott’s case is unique because of the astronomical size of her wealth, currently estimated at roughly $37 billion, and the fact that her fortune was generated by her shares of stock in Amazon, one of the biggest and highest-profile companies in the world, Rosqueta says.
“There have always been wealthy people who have chosen to be quiet about their giving, who have chosen to give unrestricted gifts to grantees, who have trusted organizations. That as a practice is not new,” Rosqueta says. “But what we have with MacKenzie Scott is probably the highest-profile version of it, and because of the level of wealth she has, she is able to give at a scale and a pace that those who have adopted the same practices can’t.”
Rosqueta points out that Scott is just one of the many high-profile philanthropists who have attempted over the years to shift attention to the organizations they support. While Scott’s attempts to deflect attention haven’t worked, Rosqueta says, they have generated healthy debate within the philanthropy world about where attention should be directed.
“If you look at the media, if you look at institutions, the focus is on the wealthy individual and always has been,” Rosqueta says. “It should be no surprise that a wealthy, very high-profile individual who is pushing back against that quite intentionally is making people concerned or feel uncomfortable because it is not the way things have been.”
Call for Applications
Scott is experimenting with a new giving strategy. In March, she announced a $250 million open call to community-focused charities to apply to Yield Giving for grants. Scott and her team brought on the nonprofit Lever for Change to oversee the application process, and she plans give $1 million apiece to 250 charities who are chosen.
Previously Scott gave only to organizations that she and her advisers selected and researched; the move marked the first time Scott has given nonprofits a chance to apply for grant money. Scott and her team placed some parameters on the open call for grant applications. Only charities with budgets of $1 million to $5 million could apply for the unrestricted grants, for example. More than 6,000 nonprofits have applied, and the 250 winners will be announced early next year.
Rosqueta and Florino say the open call is a positive development and shows Scott is interested in actively developing and broadening her giving practices. But Florino worries about the length of the grant-making process.
“In some ways, this looks like the kind of thing nonprofits complain about, that it takes a year from the time they submit their application until the time they get their money,” Florino says. “I’m not criticizing it. I’m just saying it’s a very big change, and I would love to see more coming from Lever for Change about why certain organizations were selected and what kind of promise they saw in them. It would be so helpful to understand what some of those parameters are.”
To learn about MacKenzie Scott’s gifts and other donors’ big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
