With a Flurry of Gifts, MacKenzie Scott And Dan Jewett Make a Statement in Brazil

Favelas of Rio De Janeiro. ErenMotion/shutterstock

MacKenzie Scott and Dan Jewett’s most recent funding announcement centers on the idea that helping any of us helps us all — which raises interesting questions about the ideas of “us” and global interconnectedness. For one, as the couple’s historic philanthropic project unfolds, how, exactly, are they setting geographic priorities?

The global giving in Scott’s first funding portfolio represented less than 8% of the total, landed mostly in Africa, and focused mainly on helping marginalized Africans live independently. Pandemic funding in July 2020 stayed stateside, but she returned to global giving the following June, with the stated intention of helping the more than 700 million people around the globe living in poverty. As always, the couple prioritized leaders of color and people with lived experience, with a specific focus on empowering women and girls in the Global South. 

As we continue to cover the tranche dropped in March, which encompasses all activity since then, we’ve seen that international support roughly doubled from the previous round. Investments ranged from combating mosquito-borne disease in Latin America and Oceana, to supporting socio-economic rights in South Africa, and backing feminist philanthropy in Asia. 

Still, in the aggregate, only a few dozen of Scott and Jewett’s nearly 800 recipients are based abroad. That makes their commitment to 16 organizations in Brazil feel less like a strategy and more like a statement.

Why Brazil? Opportunity is one educated guess. 

Despite its wealth and rapid growth, Brazil is one of the most unequal countries in the world. The top 10% of citizens earn more than half of total income; the bottom 50% own less than 1% of national wealth. Currently, only half of Brazil’s schoolchildren can read by age 10. 

Human rights are overtly challenged. The country systematically excludes the nearly half of its citizens who identify as Afro-Brazilians. Civil society has been pushed aside politically, and democracy itself seems at stake. While still formally a democracy, Brazil elected far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro in 2018, and a presidential race against former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is shaping up to be more competitive than expected. 

Although Brazil may seem to be an unexpected focus for Scott and Jewett, it’s a critical time to step up. Here are the 16 interconnected organizations they chose to address the full spectrum of Brazil’s challenges, loosely grouped by primary purpose. 

Racial equity 

Scott and Jewett funded the Baobá Fund for Racial Equity, the “first and only fund” exclusively dedicated to promoting racial equity for the Black population of Brazil. Founded in 2011, it advances its work in three ways: pro-racial equity projects, social articulation, and mobilizing people and resources behind racial justice. Programmatic themes include education, economic development, communication and memory, and life with dignity.

The support clearly aligns with their goal of supporting underrepresented people. Baobá advocates for the roughly 56% of Brazilians who identify as Black—the largest cohort of people of African descent outside of Africa. Yet Afro-Brazilians are systematically pushed to the margins of society in terms of education, security, healthcare and quality of life. They make up only 18% of Brazil’s Congress, are more likely to be shot by police, and are paid less. 

The Baobá Fund was created with an endowment match-funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, working in collaboration with activists and thought leaders from a number of Brazilian civil society organizations, according to Kellogg. The 10-year, total $25 million contribution is part of WKKF’s focus on supporting racial equity. Other funders include the Ford Foundation and JPMorgan Chase.

Boosting civil society

The three recipients that boost civil society use different tactics, by creating funding partnerships, developing leaders, and working holistically to transform lives. The BrazilFoundation is a leading change agent within the country, channeling philanthropic investments to five thematic areas: education and culture, human rights, health, socioeconomic development and the environment. A grantmaker, it also facilitates partnerships and trains grantees in the skills and solutions needed to sustain their work. Last year, it invested in 155 organizations across Brazil.

The organization announced $5 million in support from Scott, representing nearly 70% of its 2021 revenue. In turn, it plans to invest in organizations working in priority areas, along with generating public awareness of equity issues and building a “deep bench” of social sector leaders to see Brazil into the future. 

Scott’s also promoting public leadership through Vetor Brasil, a nonpartisan group that works in professional development for the public sector. Since 2015, it’s trained more than 100,000 candidates, and helped place nearly 400 professionals in governments led by 14 different political parties. Guided by the motto “be the change you want to see in government,” Vetor Brazil has placed at least one public sector professional in each of Brazil’s 27 states. Other institutional supporters include Fundação Lemann, Instituto Betty e Jacob Lafer and Microsoft.

Vetor Brasil quickly announced plans to invest the roughly $750,000 it received from Scott in developing technology to support new solutions and awareness campaigns. Joice Toyota, co-founder and co-CEO of Vetor Brasil commented on the “complete freedom” Scott gave the organization in allowing it to use funds as it sees fit — an “investment model” that’s “not common here in Brazil.”

Founded by Dr. Vera Cordeiro in Rio in 1991, Instituto Dara promotes health and human development through an integrated model that attacks inequality from multiple angles. The group operates across sectors, actively sharing information, influencing public policy and mobilizing civil society. Its Family Action Plan encourages families to take charge of their own destinies by integrating goals and actions in the areas of health, wealth, housing, education and citizenship. 

By the numbers, Dara reports direct assistance to 75,000 people. According to Georgetown University, the long-term impact of its work includes an 85% drop in children’s hospital readmissions once they’re three years out from participating in the plan, and a 92% increase in both family income and home ownership within three to five years. 

Dara also counts top funders like Ashoka, Avina and Skoll Foundation as supporters.

A matter of human rights

Human rights organizations drew the greatest attention from Scott and Jewett. Half of the four groups they funded in this arena work in favelas, low-income slum areas that are a clear consequence of social development inequities. 

The civil society institution Redes de Maré uses public policy to support human rights and boost the quality of life for the 140,000 residents of the 16 favelas of Maré, one of the largest slum complexes in Rio de Janeiro.

The group works in four key areas: arts and culture, public security and access to justice, education, and urban and socio-environmental rights, which supports residents in the face of development and construction planning. 

Gerando Falcões (GF) also approaches social development via favelas, working with favela leaders to eradicate poverty for the 14 million Brazilians living in slums throughout the country. It scales and delivers educational, economic and citizenship services to favela territories using local, lived experience.

Founded by social entrepreneur Edu Lyra, GF also hosts transformational programs like Favela 3D, which stands for Decent, Digital, and Developed, a springboard to move families out of slums through income generation, gender support, education, early childhood interventions, housing and healthcare. 

GF is reported to have received 27 million Brazilian Real, or roughly $5.5 million, from Scott and plans to direct at least a million of that to a pilot project in the favela dos Sonhos in São Paulo, home to 1,000 low-income residents. Part of that will use “civic imagination” to create a development plan alongside favela residents. 

Beyond Scott, other supporters include the American companies Salesforce, Accenture and KPMG. Oracle, Microsoft and Hershey’s are listed as social investors. 

Also working to advance human rights is Conectas, or the Brazil Human Rights Fund, which promotes an agenda to defend and protect human rights and democracy. Part of its work targets migration and asylum situations that it said are worsened by “internal conflicts and the economic crisis.” Brazil sees significant numbers of refugees from around the world, primarily Venezuela, Haiti, Senegal, Syria, Bengal and Nigeria.

Conectas grew from a need to connect organizations, activists and academics from the Global South in the face of threats to civil society, stemming from Bolsonaro’s promise to end “all types of activism,” and attacks on organizations protecting the environment, human rights and minority groups.

“We work to ensure that NGOs, social movements and activists have freedom of action, security and a place in the discussion of public policies,” Conectas wrote. “The strength of our democracy depends on this.”

Fundo Brasil de Direitos Humanos was founded in 2003 by a well-known group of human rights defenders committed to ensuring actions in the field converted to sustainable practices, and worked in concert. Its efforts were backed by the Ford Foundation early on, with an investment of $3 million that helped it create an endowment. 

Today, it works with both individuals and nongovernmental organizations, and acts as a bridge between local organizations and individual, corporate and institutional donors, strengthening the technical and political capacity of the groups it works with while building visibility.

All in, it’s raised more than $8 million to support projects throughout Brazil, hosted 46 public awareness events, and launched 30 annual and specific calls for proposals. 

A focus on women and girls

Supporting women and girls is a running theme of Scott and Jewett’s international giving, and one Brazilian organization has a clear focus on the cause. Since 2000, ELAS – Social Investment Fund has passed a number of milestones on the way to establishing women’s rights and leadership as important levers for social change. 

It puts the ability of women to transform society at the center of all it does, grounded in the belief that “the real participation of women in the economy and society accelerates social and economic development.”

ELAS launches periodic calls for proposals that have so far drawn investments of more than $6 million. The Global Fund for Women, the Synergos Institute, the Brazilian Government, and Prospera are all listed as supporters.

ELAS has provided more than 25,000 women and girls with direct support that it estimates has reached another 100,000 people. The group also consults with both private and public institutions on strategies to boost female leadership.

“It is gratifying to receive this kind of recognition, and for that, there are no words to thank this philanthropist who realized the importance of having full confidence in the strategies and work of the diversity of civil society organizations,” read a statement.

Education

The throughline of education runs across most of the Brazilian funding, like work in favelas, or learning how to become informed and active citizens. But two of the organizations formally cite education as their primary purpose.

Lemann Foundation believes Brazilians hold their own key to solving society’s complex problems and works in education on two fronts. First, it prepares adult leaders to achieve an equitable future for the people of Brazil. And second, it partners with funders like Google, YouTube, W.K. Kellogg and the Omidyar Network — and institutes of higher learning like Harvard and Oxford — to guarantee access to high-quality public education. 

Lemann drives change at both the individual and systemic level by prioritizing quality instruction, arming educators with resources, and collaborating with experts on developing the country’s new National Learning Standards. It also partners with Khan Academy to increase online access to education.

True to form, Scott’s other educational funding supports children excluded by disability through an organization that believes that every person has the right to a mainstream education.

Founded by Rodrigo Hübner Mendes, a former business consultant at Accenture, Rodrigo Mendes Institute (IRL) supports training, systemic best practices, and advocacy. Programs are rolled out through partnerships with groups like the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), JPMorgan Chase, and the FC Barcelona Foundation. 

Between 2011 and 2020, IRM has trained 3,100 educators, attracted a total of 4 million visitors to its online platform DIVERSA, and has impacted 265,000 students across Brazil. Rodrigo said the donation marked a “milestone in its fundraising history,” and will allow the group to expand its research and monitoring of public policies aimed at inclusive schools.

Safety and security

Progress isn’t possible when violence rules everyday life. Sou da Paz Institute believes that security is nothing more than living in peace, and that peace “must be constructed on a daily basis.” The NGO has worked for more than 15 years to reduce violence in Brazil by putting policy into practice on security and violence prevention, guided by the ideas of “democracy, social justice and human rights.” 

Currently, it’s prioritizing two forms of violence, starting with the homicides that victimize 50,000 Brazilians each year, 80% of which are by firearm, and half of which involve young men. The other form is robbery, which occurs at a high rate in all urban centers and saps the resources of both the police and criminal justice system. Sou la Paz analyzes public security statistics, sources viable solutions, advises on government roll-out, and rallies public opinion.

The institute received about $1.2 million from Scott, the equivalent of its annual budget. Executive Director Carolina Ricardo said funding gives the organization “an important breath” to take care of itself while developing new areas of work that were previously beyond reach. 

In addition to Scott, Sou la Paz has garnered support from Open Society Foundations, and the Ford and Oak foundations, among others.

Supporting activists

Two of Scott and Jewett’s funding decisions recognize the critical juncture democracy faces by helping to mobilize activism and political engagement.

Nossas acts as a catalyst for democratic and “solidarity-based activism” in Brazil and parts of Latin America. Funding will strengthen its work in three pillars: democracy, social justice and equality.

Founded in 2011 as a multi-cause means of bringing Rio’s residents closer to local politics, it has since developed numerous tactics and strategies, mobilized millions, and led campaigns. 

They include a 2014 effort to create Rio’s first Missing Persons Police Precinct, which went on to solve 80% of cases; and raising $85,000 to support vulnerable populations against hate speech after the 2018 presidential elections. In 2020, it joined with 200 other organizations to provide a basic income as part of pandemic emergency aid. By 2021, it had the capacity to launch 15 successful campaigns to change Brazilians’ lives. 

Scott’s support for Politize! Institute of Political Education also backs organized efforts to support democracy, this time through engaged citizens. 

The organization promotes the power of political education for anyone, anywhere, and all forms of citizen participation, including voting, running for office, and joining a political party. It advocates for engagement in participatory budgeting in areas like public works and sanitation, and encourages citizens to use the government’s public ombudsman as a conduit to achieving goals. 

As Brazil’s new election cycle rolls on, Politize! is committed to spreading knowledge of the electoral process and awakening diverse communities to the importance of their collective vote and voice. 

Finally, two other investments support a sustainable environment as part of a larger effort to support diversity and conservation. Casa Sociambiental Fund, a socio-environmental fund, has expanded its work to South America over time. And Projecto Saúde e Alegria, or the Health and Happiness Project, has been promoting participatory and sustainable community development in the Brazilian Amazon for more than two decades. Read more about Scott and Jewett’s global environmental funding here.

The Brazilian organizations working to find solutions for their country are part of a larger network of close to 800 grantees, and the scores of people within them that are using their informed insights and lived experience to change the balance of power. In Brazil, that kind of interconnectedness couldn’t come at a better time.