Girl Scouts of the USA announced that MacKenzie Scott donated $84.5 million—their largest gift ever from one person. The generous grant will help make up for the absence of funds raised from cookie sales and membership during the pandemic. The donation, awarded to GSUSA and 29 local councils including $4.2 million to the Girl Scouts of Minnesota and Wisconsin River Valleys and $4.9 million to Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles.
The donation will accelerate GSUSA’s initiatives that give girls the tools to become the next generation of powerful women leaders. The group says the grant will also foster an expanded focus on career readiness and mental wellness. The money will also bolster staff and volunteer training and future-proof its facilities, including the iconic Girl Scout camp properties, including expanding both accessibility and high adventure elements at camp.
“We are so appreciative of MacKenzie Scott’s gift to Girl Scouts. This is a great accelerator for our ongoing efforts to help girls cultivate the skills and connections needed to lead in their own communities and globally,” said Girl Scouts of the USA CEO Sofia Chang. “The support from all our donors, including this generous donation from Ms. Scott, is critical in delivering on our work of reimagination and transformation. We’re excited to prove how Ms. Scott’s investment in girls will change the world—because when one girl succeeds, we all succeed.”
Since the pandemic began, the youth organization’s membership has dropped by 30%: It was a little more than 1 million in 2021-2022, down from roughly 1.4 million in 2019-2020, according to figures the group released last year. Philanthropic contributions are increasingly important, as many people incorrectly assume the Girl Scouts raise enough money to fund itself from cookie sales alone but the organization says the majority of those proceeds stays with local councils and troops.
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American novelist and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has donated two Beverly Hills homes to charity for a total of $55 million. The California Community Foundation (CCF), a nonprofit philanthropic organization based in Los Angeles announced that Scott, 52, donated “two single-family residences valued at $55 million” to the foundation in July. The gated 2.5 acre compound includes a 12,000 square foot main residence built in the 1990s, a 4,500 square foot guesthouse, a swimming pool, a full size tennis court and 6 car garage.
The first home was purchased by Scott and her ex-husband Jeff Bezos in 2007 for $24.45 million. The second home was purchased by the couple in 2017 for $12.9 million. The CCF hopes to quickly sell the high-maintenance spread, with the proceeds going towards affordable housing projects and an immigrant integration program. “The cost of housing stands out as one of the most critical issues affecting the lives of millions of Los Angeles residents. A priority for Ms. Scott, the primary focus of the $55 million will be to permanently endow grantmaking efforts to benefit Angelenos in need of affordable housing,” CCF said in a statement.
CCF has been an advocacy leader for increased affordable housing production, helping lead the passage of Proposition HHH, an initiative to add 10,000 new units in the City of Los Angeles by 2026. Los Angeles is poised to exceed its target by funding 10,510 units in 178 projects. Scott’s gift will permanently support the expansion of these grantmaking efforts. This is the second time Scott has donated to the organization, giving the nonprofit $20 million last year to create the LA Arts Endowment Fund.
Scott, whose estimated net worth is $37 billion makes her the 29th richest person in the world. Scott still owns 4% of Amazon after selling $8.5 billion in company stocks. After her divorce from Jeff Bezos, Scott signed the Giving Pledge, promising to donate at least half of her wealth over her lifetime, and has since gifted billions of her dollars to large and small organizations dedicated to social equity. She has so far donated more than $12 billion to charitable causes and groups as part of the Giving Pledge. Earlier this year, Scott donated $436 million to Habitat for Humanity. Last year she announced donations of $2.7 billion to nearly 300 organizations.
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Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has made the biggest donation in the 118-year history of Big Brothers Big Sisters. The organization announced that the billionaire philanthropist has donated $122.6 million. The massive donation will be divided among 38 agencies, which is what the organization calls its local chapters.
The Big Brothers Big Sisters organization has been fostering one-on-one relationships between kids and their adult mentors across the country for more than a century. The goal is to help children achieve their potential through long-lasting, positive relationships. The organization has mentoring programs that are community-based, school-based, for children of military families and children with incarcerated parents.
With the nation’s largest donor- and volunteer-supported mentoring network, they make meaningful, monitored matches between adult volunteers (“Bigs”) and children (“Littles”), ages 5 through young adulthood in communities across the country. Artis Stevens, president and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America said “We are incredibly grateful and humbled by MacKenzie’s generosity and acknowledgement of the incredible work of our passionate professionals and volunteers who are unwavering in their commitment to create meaningful outcomes for young people today and for generations to come,”
Scott’s donation is the latest in her extensive philanthropic work. Since pledging to give away most of her fortune, the ex-wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has given more than $12 billion to more than 1,200 organizations over the past three years. In March, Scott revealed she donated $3.9 billion to various organizations including Planned Parenthood and Habitat for Humanity.
Last year, Scott announced giving away $2.7 billion to 286 organizations including the Children’s Defense Fund and National Equity Project. In 2020, Scott made two big donations of $1.7 billion to diverse organizations including historically Black colleges and universities, and another $4.2 billion to groups providing services including food banks and debt relief.
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Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott revealed in a blog post that she has donated nearly $4 billion to 465 nonprofits including a $436 million donation to Habitat for Humanity International and 84 of its affiliates to create affordable housing. That donation is the largest publicly disclosed gift from Scott so far. Her policy is to let the organizations she donates to make the announcements in the hopes of minimizing attention. Her recent post confirmed announcements by several organizations.
The announcement brings Scott’s publicly disclosed donations to more than $12 billion since 2019. In total, Scott says she’s donated to 1,257 organizations. Scott, who is worth about $48 billion according to Forbes, signed the Giving Pledge through which many billionaires have promised to donate more than half of their wealth. Scott declines interviews and only discusses her philanthropic choices through her blog posts. Her recent post touched off a wave of nonprofits announcing their plans for the donations.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America and 21 of its affiliates received its largest gift ever from Scott— $275 million. Boys & Girls Clubs of America announced a $281 million donation similarly dispersed among local chapters of the organization. HIAS, the international Jewish humanitarian organization, said Scott donated $10 million to its campaign to raise $40 million for its emergency response in Ukraine. Community Catalyst, a healthcare reform nonprofit in Boston, announced it received $25 million and would use the funds to help “create a health system rooted in race equity and health justice.”
In her blog post, Scott said 60% of the groups she and husband Dan Jewett donated to are led by women and 75% are led by people with lived experience in the regions they support and the issues they seek to address. “Our team’s focus over these last nine months has included some new areas, but as always our aim has been to support the needs of underrepresented people from groups of all kinds. Scott believes in “supporting people directly experiencing inequities is essential, both because it is informed by insights no one else can contribute, and because it seeds power and opportunity within the community itself.”
In the newest blog post, Scott said her team is working on building a website that will include a searchable database of her grants. The expansive list of organizations that received her latest round of donations have a broad range of missions and mandates—from improving women’s health to solving the climate crisis to helping military families, incarcerated people, and teachers.
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MacKenzie Scott says she is giving away another $2.7 billion of her fortune to 286 nonprofit organizations. Scott, who divorced from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2019, made the announcement in a blog post. Scott said her organization spent the first quarter of 2021 researching equity-oriented nonprofit organizations working in neglected and underfunded areas. The recipients span from institutions of higher education and arts and culture, to organizations fighting poverty, working on interfaith issues and building community engagement.
Scott signed the Giving Pledge, a commitment by wealthy individuals to give away a majority of their money. So far Scott has given away more than $8 billion in three rounds of funding to various organizations. Her net worth is estimated to be nearly $60 billion and she received a 4% stake in Amazon during her divorce. Shares of Amazon’s stock rose sharply during the pandemic. Despite still giving away billions, Scott’s wealth keeps growing.
Like the $4 billion Scott gave to 384 organizations in the last four months of 2020, the donations are unrestricted, so recipients can use the money as they see fit. “Many reported that this trust significantly increased the impact of the gift” Scott wrote. Calling the donations to individual organizations “relatively large,” Scott described the new cash as a means to do more good work with less financial stress.
“These are people who have spent years successfully advancing humanitarian aims, often without knowing whether there will be any money in their bank accounts in two months. What do we think they might do with more cash on hand than they expected? Buy needed supplies. Find new creative ways to help. Hire a few extra team members they know they can pay for the next five years. Buy chairs for them. Stop having to work every weekend. Get some sleep,” Scott suggested.
Scott’s approach to philanthropy is unique as she doesn’t have a website for an organization to apply for donations. She prefers to research an array of organizations to narrow down the list of recipients for each round of donations. She then announces the chosen organizations in blog posts in a list format but doesn’t state the amount of money they’ve been granted. Some organizations have revealed how much money they’ll receive.
The president of the University of Central Florida said his institution will receive $40 million – the largest donation in the university’s history. Florida International University is receiving the same amount. Long Beach City College, in California, thanked Scott for the $30 million donation they will receive — also the single largest donation in its history. The University of Texas at San Antonio is also receiving $40 million, which its president called “completely transformational.” The university said Scott was drawn to UTSA because of the university’s strong commitment to create pathways to success for students from communities with significant educational attainment and income disparities.
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