Late last year, the philanthrosphere waited with bated breath for a fourth announcement from MacKenzie Scott—what we hoped would be another multibillion-dollar round of unrestricted gifts to hundreds of nonprofits. Instead, we got “no dollar signs this time” and a meditation on Scott’s belief in a broader definition for philanthropy.
Scott’s stated reason for deciding not to list her latest grantees was a desire to de-center herself and place a greater focus on the recipients. She left it to them to decide if and when they’d go public about their gifts, and that prompted some criticism—here and elsewhere—as well as some criticism of that criticism. Turns out, it’s hard for the world’s most powerful woman (according to Forbes) to de-center herself in the big philanthropy debate.
Scott was actually quite responsive to the pushback. A few days after her first message, she posted a follow-up reiterating her “commitment to sharing information about my own giving” and promising to “continue to post updates twice every 12 months or so.” She also hinted at launching a website sometime this year to answer some of the many questions swirling around her giving operation. One of the items that website may include: a “searchable database of gifts.”
While we’re still awaiting word on what that might look like—and if it’ll happen—a steady drip of announcements have emerged from Scott’s late 2021 grantees. So far, around two dozen nonprofits have disclosed their gifts, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy pegs the dollar total of those gifts at $443.5 million.
That’s almost certainly only a fraction of the true total. Judging from Scott’s past announcements, recipients may very well number over 100, and the dollar total likely exceeds $1 billion. But there are plenty of takeaways to be had from even this limited sample. While we await more news, here are five things we know about this latest round of gifts.
Most recipients are part of the “care economy”
Scott tends to organize each of her giving rounds in a loosely thematic fashion. First, we had a broad focus on equity, movements and democracy. COVID relief was the main emphasis for round two. Last June, arts and culture organizations and philanthropy-serving groups joined the party.
A primary theme for this latest round seems to be the broader “care economy,” to borrow a phrase from the Biden administration’s much-embattled Build Back Better framework. For instance, while Scott has backed children- and youth-focused groups in the past, they appear to be an even more pronounced focus here. K-12 education is a major part of that, as well as nonprofits that serve youth in other ways—like offering leadership development opportunities and helping them confront addiction.
While even Scott’s giving pales next to the billions that increased federal spending would bring to the table, her endorsement of organizations fighting for the young, the old, the sick and the under-served sends an important message about the care economy’s relative lack of resources. As is often the case, Scott’s grants have been many grantees’ largest ever.
Children and youth are a big through line
The majority of Scott’s latest grantees who’ve gone public with their gifts serve children or youth in some way. Organizations that work in K-12 education and provide formative opportunities for young people secured some of the biggest gifts: places like Communities in Schools, which got a whopping $133.5 million to extend in-school support services for at-risk kids, and the NewSchools Venture Fund ($35 million), an established venture funding shop in the K-12 space that attracts plenty of mega-donor support.
Multiple organizations serving children and youth got eight-figure grants, including the National 4-H Council ($50 million), a longtime provider of educational programs for children and youth at land grant universities, as well as Reading Partners ($20 million), which offers early literacy intervention programming.
Youth leadership is another theme, with gifts to places like Global Citizen Year ($12 million) and Public Allies ($10 million). Both groups are using the money to spearhead fundraising campaigns. Two organizations focused on play have also received funding: KaBoom ($14 million), which resources communities where children have limited access to quality play spaces; and Playworks ($10 million), which helps educators “rethink playtime.” Finally, Scott also gave $3 million to Young People in Recovery, which the organization described as “one of the largest unrestricted gifts ever to a direct services provider in the substance use recovery space.”
Reproductive rights and mental health are also areas to watch
Gender equity has certainly been an element of Scott’s grantmaking, but not quite to the same degree as someone like Melinda French Gates, her oft-cited analogue, and, maybe, future large-scale giving partner. Yet in this latest round, Scott has stepped things up with gifts pertaining to the hot-button issue of reproductive rights. At $25 million, one of her larger recent commitments went to the Collaborative for Gender and Reproductive Equity, a funding collaborative founded in 2018 to back both state-based and national movement organizations. Another $15 million went to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-reproductive-rights policy shop.
This is timely stuff. Philanthropy has been dropping the ball on reproductive rights for a long time now, and current threats to abortion care and related services are one manifestation of that. It’ll take no-holds-barred funding like this to turn things around.
Meanwhile, mental health is another area of clear need that Scott seems to be targeting. Grantees from this round include the JED Foundation ($15 million) and Active Minds ($4 million), both focused on mental health challenges facing young people. This is crucial support—students and other young people are confronting a serious mental health crisis. Responsive giving is on the rise, but there’s still a lot of need out there.
Scott’s leaning into policy
Scott is no newcomer to policy giving—advocacy groups working on a range of issues have secured her support in the past. Nevertheless, this latest round appears to include a higher-than-typical number of policy shops, or groups that include policy advocacy in their work.
Here, as elsewhere this round, education and care infrastructure is a focus. Child Trends ($10 million) aims to combat child poverty and promote racial equity via research. United States of Care ($8 million) is a relatively new organization dedicated to advocating for an equitable and affordable healthcare system. The National Council on Aging ($8 million) works to address inequities affecting people as they age. Another interesting grantee is the Center for Science in the Public Interest ($15 million), the consumer advocacy organization that helped lead the charge to require those now-ubiquitous nutrition facts on food containers back in the 1990s.
Racial equity remains a through line for Scott’s policy giving, building on previous grants to places like PolicyLink. Several of the recipients already mentioned center racial equity in their work; others from this round include the Center for Law and Social Policy ($10 million), whose anti-poverty advocacy focuses on addressing systemic racism, and Latinos for Education ($5 million), which is active in the K-12 space.
What isn’t here—as far as we know
As in the past, Scott seems to be prioritizing U.S.-based groups over global NGOs. The majority of her recent grantees are also national rather than local—one exception is Oakland Reach ($3 million), a new-ish Bay Area organization focused on K-12 equity that provided virtual learning hubs to local students during the pandemic.
Scott has been a groundbreaking supporter of historically Black colleges and universities (HCBUs) since she began her mega-giving in 2020. That isn’t likely to change. But so far, only one of these recent recipients fits that bill: the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles, which got $20 million.
Also pretty much absent from the list—as far as we know—are arts and culture organizations, which comprised a large proportion of the gifts Scott announced in mid-2021. The same goes for philanthrosphere organizations, another staple of that June 2021 tranche. Democracy organizations also get light billing here, as do groups working on direct COVID relief, the focus of Scott’s second round. That said, longer-term, equitable “rebuilding” from the pandemic is an important aim for many of these care infrastructure groups.
—
Since we only have a partial list of Scott’s latest beneficiaries, it’s possible some of the above is incomplete or even flat-out wrong. And even when Scott was listing her gifts—a practice to which we hope she returns—there was never any guarantee those lists were exhaustive. She’s giving through DAFs and possibly other opaque channels, and transparency isn’t a requirement. While Scott’s impulse to de-center herself is understandable, it makes it difficult for the media and nonprofits alike to keep track of her sector-changing giving.
Still, Scott’s philanthropic tour de force seems to be in little danger of slowing down. She still has over $40 billion to give (a total that may increase if tech stocks rebound from their 2022 pounding) and that giving is proceeding apace, even if we don’t know as much about it. In any case, here’s looking forward to more updates from Scott and her team this year.