By THALIA BEATY (Associated Press)
Billionaire philanthropist and author MacKenzie Scott declared on Tuesday that she is donating $640 million to 361 small nonprofits that applied in response to an open call for applications.
Yield Giving’s initial round of donations exceeds what Scott had originally promised to give away through the application process. Since she began donating billions in 2019, Scott and her team have carefully chosen organizations without an application process and given them large, unrestricted gifts.
In a brief statement on her website, Scott expressed her gratitude 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 that 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 for 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 given $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.
Her organization has won lawsuits recently around access to emergency contraception and the rights of trans youth to play sports. They plan to use the funds to expand their work into North Dakota. Peterson said the funds must be used for tax exempt purposes but otherwise come with no restrictions or reporting requirements — just like Scott’s previous grants.
“I think she’s really helping to set a new path for philanthropy broadly, which is with that philosophy of: Find people doing good work and give them resources and then get out of the way,” Peterson said of Scott. “I am grateful for not just the support individually, but the way in which I think she is having an impact on philanthropy broadly.”
The public request asked for applications from non-profit organizations that are led by the community with missions 'to advance the voices and opportunities of individuals and families of little or humble means,' Yield Giving stated on its website. Only non-profits with yearly budgets between $1 and $5 million were allowed to apply.
The winners were chosen through a complex process, where applicants rated other applicants and then the top organizations were evaluated by a group of external experts.
Scott has donated $16.5 billion from the fortune she received after divorcing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Initially, she shared the donations in online blog posts, occasionally mentioning the organizations and sometimes not. She introduced a database of her donations in December 2022, under the name Yield Giving.
In an essay reflecting on the website, she wrote, 'Information from other people – other givers, my team, the non-profit teams I’ve been giving to – has been enormously helpful to me. If more information about these gifts can be helpful to anyone, I want to share it.'
Smith Arrillaga, of CEP, said it was important that Scott is, 'continuing to honor her commitment in terms of giving away her wealth, even though she’s thinking, changing and tweaking the ‘how’ of how it’s done and she’s still trying to go with the spirit of what she committed to.'
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