Billionaire philanthropist and author MacKenzie Scott announced Tuesday she is giving $640 million to 360 small nonprofits that responded to an open call for applications, including five in the St. Louis region.
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.
Some 6,353 nonprofits applied for the $1 million grants when applications opened.
“In light of the incredible work of these organizations, as judged by their peers and external panelists, the donor team decided to expand the awardee pool and the award amount," said Lever for Change, which specializes in running philanthropic prize awards.
Five organizations based in the St. Louis region received awards:
Nurses for Newborns $2 million
Sherwood Forest camp $2 million
Missouri Jobs with Justice $2 million
Vision For Children at Risk $1 million
Starkloff Disability Institute $2 million
“This award is transformative for our organization,” Lori Becker, CEO of the Starkloff Disability Institute said in a statement Tuesday. “This funding will increase our capacity to help more people and build inclusion everywhere we live, learn, work, and play. Together we will raise the bar so disabled people can thrive!”
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.
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.
“In a world teeming with potential and talent, the Open Call has given us an opportunity to identify, uplift, and empower transformative organizations that often remain unseen,” Cecilia Conrad, CEO of Lever for Change, said in a statement.
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.”
