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.
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 in learning more about the applicants' experience of the process and whether Scott continues to use this process going forward.
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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 awarded $2 million, while 82 organizations in a second tier received $1 million each.
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In North Texas, Bonton Farms, Prison Entrepreneurship Program, and the Epilepsy Foundation of Texas, each were awarded $2 million prizes. Dallas Afterschool was awarded $1 million.
In South Dallas, Bonton Farms started in 2014 as a community garden and has grown to include two farms, a restaurant, a coffee shop, and a farmers market, with plans for more on the horizon. The farm aims to work with residents to improve the lives of everyone living in the Bonton neighborhood.
Gabe Madison, president of Bonton Farms, told NBC 5 on Tuesday they began the application process for the grant a year ago and found out they'd been awarded the $2 million gift last week.
“We first learned about this about a week ago, so we’ve had a little time for the shock to wear off,” said Gabe Madison, President of Bonton Farms.
"It was that dream shot that we were trying to make. We took our shot, and we made it. We're now making a national presence for a community that was never really on the map."
Madison said the grant will allow the farm to add apprentices to the workforce development program, increasing access to healthcare and wellness opportunities and will help create affordable living spaces.
"We are extremely grateful, feeling very, very blessed to receive this type of gift," Madison said.
Madison said Bonton Farms plans to open the community's first wellness center in 2015 and hopes to soon break ground on an affordable housing solution, a 36-unit apartment complex. Bonton Farms also plans to build a resource center in the community to promote other area nonprofits.
Madison added that the timing for Bonton Farms could not be more perfect as she reflects on past hurdles and future endeavors.
“With that great gift it allows for us to do so much more for this community,” she said.
In all, Scott gifted 13 Texas nonprofits $24 million. See the list here.
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 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. Initially, she publicized the gifts in online blog posts, sometimes naming the organizations and sometimes not. She launched a database of her giving 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 nonprofit 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."
