What is next for billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott’s giving?

Much about billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott’s donations remains a mystery, but those receiving grants from her recent open appeal for nonprofits do offer some insights, experts say.

Scott’s grants, announced in March, largely align with her usual themes — with equity and justice, education, health care and economic security and opportunity being the largest categories. However, a slightly higher percentage of the most recent grants went to democracy-focused organizations, says Gabrielle Fitzgerald, founder and CEO of Panorama Global.

Organizations focused on “race and ethnicity” and “youth development” were the two largest categories, according to the gifts database on its Yield Giving website. Overall, Scott has given the most grants to organizations in the southern US, while California and New York were the states with the largest number of recipient nonprofits in the latest round.

Understanding Scott’s donations, which she does not discuss outside of the essays on her website, remains a high priority for many nonprofits who dream of receiving one of her large, unrestricted gifts. Scott, who has pledged to give away more than half of her wealth, said she has donated more than $17.3 billion to more than 2,300 nonprofits since 2019. However, her net worth is currently around $37 billion, which is about $2 billion more, according to Forbes. than she had after her divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was finalized.

To expand her giving, Scott last year offered nonprofits the opportunity to apply for $1 million in grants through a new Lever for Change initiative. She required nonprofit applicants to have an annual budget between $1 million and $5 million, capturing a small percentage of the more than 1.8 million nonprofits in the United States. Ultimately, Scott decided to donate more than the $250 million she initially pledged to applicants.

Scott and her team chose 361 nonprofits from a pool of 6,353 applicants and awarded them $1 million or $2 million, totaling $640 million in gifts.

“She has been an inspiration to a lot of people, but not a lot of people act on that inspiration,” said Pamala Wiepking, a professor at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University who has studied the impact of unlimited giving on people. non-profit organizations.

Together with her co-authors, Wiepking discovered a discrepancy between the missions of many financiers who want to bring about major social changes and the way they actually provide grants, which are often intended for specific projects for a limited period of time. She regularly speaks with funders who are interested in learning more, but she doesn’t see many changing their patterns.

Fitzgerald of Panorama Global, which has studied Scott’s donations, including the impact of these large gifts on nonprofits, hoped Scott would continue to roll out additional applications, especially to smaller organizations.

“I think the interesting question will be: Will she move back to nonprofits with annual budgets under $1 million in the future?” said Fitzgerald. She also urged Scott to consider offering a new round of funding to organizations she has previously supported, saying: “Her gifts are super generous, but unfortunately they don’t provide long-term sustainability.”

Early on, Scott was criticized for a lack of transparency. Although she released a public database of her gifts in 2022, she remains essentially unreachable.

“It’s clear that the open call was in response to some questions around transparency and access,” said Elisha Smith Arrillaga, vice president at The Center for Effective Philanthropy, of the recent application process. She’s curious to see what the process looked like from the perspective of the nonprofits that signed up and what mix of donation methods Scott uses in the future.

Lever for Change said it did not allow for another round of interviews for Scott.

The call to offer nonprofits unlimited funding goes back decades. In 2019, five major U.S. foundations pledged to end the nonprofit “starvation cycle,” acknowledging that they were undermining the work of their grantees by withholding funding for nonprofit activities, known as “overhead.”

In addition, many major funders actually want to participate in some way in the work of their grantees, to offer their expertise on a topic. Some foundations also provide training or other support to grantees and solicit feedback from them. To date, Scott has not provided such an opportunity or additional support beyond her notable major gifts.

“There is no long-term relationship,” Wiepking said of Scott. “What they’re saying about trust-based philanthropy is providing support without any restrictions, and that’s generally not what it does.”

Scott’s giving, which has averaged $3.3 billion annually as of 2019, makes her one of the largest philanthropic funders in the US. The foundation’s largest funder, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said it plans to spend $8.6 billion by 2024. Last year, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation said it distributed $4.58 billion, most of which went to organizations based in or around San Francisco. According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Michael Bloomberg donated $3 billion in 2023.

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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits is supported by the AP’s partnership with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.