MacKenzie Scott’s philanthropy Yield Giving announced on Tuesday the 361 organizations that will receive grants of $1 million to $2 million following an open call process. The total sum being granted is $640 million.
One year ago, Yield Giving launched an open call to “community-led, community-focused” nonprofits that serve individuals and families of limited means and groups that have faced “discrimination and other systemic obstacles.” Some 6,353 organizations applied for the grants.
The philanthropy initially aimed to issue 250 awards of $1 million, but ultimately bumped up the amounts and number of recipients.
Scott, the former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, provided a short message on her website announcing the grants.
“Grateful to Lever for Change and everyone on the evaluation and implementation teams for their roles in creating this pathway to support for people working to improve access to foundational resources in their communities,” she wrote in part. “They are vital agents of change.”
Yield Giving partnered with Lever for Change to manage the open call process. Applicants were first rated by their peers, with the top organizations moving to a second round in which they were reviewed by an external panel, followed by a final round of due diligence.
Winners came from 38 states, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Some 279 organizations received $2 million each, and 82 organizations received $1 million each.
Washington state recipients include:
- Open Arms Perinatal Services, $2 million
- Council for the Homeless, $2 million
- Northwest Education Access, $2 million
- East African Community Services, $2 million
- Whatcom Center for Early Learning, $2 million
- Interfaith Works, $2 million
- Arts Corps, $2 million
- Technology Access Foundation, $2 million
- The Mockingbird Society, $2 million
- Front and Centered, $2 million
Scott has given away $17.3 billion to charitable efforts through Yield Giving. Her current net worth is $35.6 billion, according to Forbes, which is just slightly less than her estimated worth of $37 billion at the time of her divorce five years ago.
The prizes awarded through the open call mark a shift in Scott’s previous manner of giving, which her organization describes as “quiet research” in which nonprofits are privately researched and analyzed, and then awarded a no-strings-attached gift that often came out of the blue.
“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,” said Renee Karibi-Whyte, senior vice president of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, in coverage by the Associated Press.
In December 2022 Scott shed a little more light on her philanthropy, publishing a list of recipients and amount of funding they received.
