Beyond Borders: A Regional Look at MacKenzie Scott’s Global Giving

Job Skills and Vocational training has been one focus in sub-saharan africa. Photo: Ericky Boniphace/shutterstock

From the beginning, MacKenzie Scott’s global giving has carried through on a number of themes: addressing inequity, supporting women and girls and creating a greener world. The latest tranche emphasized Scott’s desire to keep solutions “of and by” the populations she hopes to lift by involving local community-based organizations in Yield Giving’s funding and empowering homegrown change agents.

While global gifts represent a small fraction of Yield Giving’s funding — roughly less than 10% of the $14 billion given away to date — some of its largest gifts have landed in the Global South. That includes a gift of $75 million to Co-Impact’s Gender Fund, and nearly half of the total $125 million committed to GiveDirectly, which puts cash in the hands of some of the world’s poorest people. 

So where, exactly, has support landed around the globe? The database Scott unveiled at year-end — which relies on self-reporting from recipients — lists seven global regions as well as a “global” option, giving us greater clarity around where all this hefty support is headed. Here, we follow the numbers to see where Yield Giving’s funding is going regionally and explore examples of how the investments are delivering on high-level goals.

By the numbers

As of April 2023, NPOs receiving money from Yield Giving self-reported that roughly 150 gifts occurred in global regions, out of an overall total of about 1,600.

The largest cohort of gifts outside of North America, home to numerous U.S.-based recipients reporting global work, went to work in sub-Saharan Africa, at 104. Behind it, at 77, is Latin America and the Caribbean, including 17 gifts in Brazil. Work in South Asia was reported 60 times. Nearly a quarter of those recipients cited India specifically.

Total gifts in each of the remaining three regions — East Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) — didn’t top 20, and were often part of wider geographical areas of service. Twenty-seven organizations characterized their work as occurring in a “global” region.

While Scott’s total global giving exceeds $1 billion, numbers are not exact. Recipients collectively opted for “delayed disclosure” of gift amounts nearly 30% of the time, and many report working in several geographic regions at once. Still, the total dollars reported show a concerted commitment to the three regions we explore below: sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and South Asia.

The data shows a clear emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa — gifts to organizations that report working in the region total just over $1 billion, representing all but a fraction of Scott’s total global giving. In Latin America and the Caribbean, where only 16% of recipients elected not to report gift size, the current total stands at around $614 million. And in South Asia, where delayed disclosure is closer to 25%, the total is $580 million.

A high level of connectedness characterizes most global giving, and these geographies aren’t exclusive. For example, of the 17 gifts keyed to the MENA region, just one gift went to work solely in the area: a 2021 commitment to Jusoor aimed at improving economic outcomes for Syrian youth.

Sub-Saharan Africa

In 2030, Africa is expected to be home to more than a quarter of the world’s population under 25. By 2050, the continent is expected to host both the largest and youngest workforce on Earth. It makes sense, then, that sub-Saharan Africa has consistently been a priority for Scott, who has emphasized health, education and economic opportunity in her giving there.

Even some of her first moves back in 2020 involved helping marginalized Africans achieve independence and self-sufficiency. The largest discrete gifts benefiting this region so far appear to have been made in 2021: $75 million to the Co-Impact Gender Fund and $50 million each to Amref Health Africa, Give Directly and Partners in Health.

In the latest tranche, announced last November, a health gift went to Evidence Action, which, as the name implies, scales evidence-based, cost-effective interventions to reduce poverty in Africa and Asia. Evidence Action is primarily known for two cost-effective initiatives. The first helps deliver safe, chlorinated water to remote, rural areas. The second is a Deworm the World Initiative that has treated more than 1.5 billion schoolchildren since 2014, delivering major health upsides for less than 50 cents a treatment. Scott’s gift of $20 million to Evidence Action will also help scale iron and folic acid supplementation for millions.

While there’s been headway, sub-Saharan Africa still has some of the highest rates of HIV prevalence in the world. Scott recently supported the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation, an NPO associated with the Desmond Tutu HIV Center, a research center within the University of Cape Town. What began as a small HIV research unit became the first to offer antiretroviral therapy to people living with HIV in South Africa. Today, it combines community programming with internationally recognized research capacity that helps drive local and national health policy.

In the realm of education, BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative received $40 million in 2020. A recent gift to the Luminos Fund builds on that through work in parts of Africa where children are lost to child labor or conflict. The fund works with governments to give public school students a second chance to catch up via accelerated learning and reintegration. To date, Luminos reports returning nearly 200,000 students to their classrooms.

Meanwhile, Yield Giving provided $12 million to Educate! to arm youth with the skills they need to get good jobs, start businesses of their own and drive local development, whatever their starting points. A full 90% of Africa’s youth are expected to work in the informal sector. Educate! approaches that in three ways: by developing workforce readiness skills training in schools, partnering with government to integrate practical hands-on experience in secondary education, and delivering a 100-hour “experience” that helps hone the skills to successfully transition from school to work. Now the largest youth skills provider in East Africa, the organization was also part of the Gates Foundation’s 2020 Goalkeepers Accelerator.

Another gift to prepare youth to meet the future went to the Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, which works with partners from government, the private sector and civil society — and 3 million youth – to lift barriers to good jobs in Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya. A recipient of the 2019 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, Harambee and its partners developed SA Youth, a single national platform to connect job seekers with employment opportunities.

Several of the gifts Scott announced in November prioritize LGBTQ people and other marginalized identities, as IP’s Dawn Wolfe covered here. That includes several organizations working in sub-Saharan Africa.

Scott’s support for UHAI – EASHRI, the East Africa Sexual Health and Rights Initiative, boosts Africa’s first indigenous, feminist, activist, participatory fund “for and by” sexual and gender minorities and sex worker communities. It works across several eastern African states: Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, employing tactics like flexible funding, capacity-building, convening and research.

Scott also gave $4 million to The Other Foundation, a community foundation dedicated to the rights of LGBTI people in South Africa. The Other Foundation advances the ideas of openness, tolerance, humanity, and equity and freedom — especially through the lens of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Scott’s work in Latin America and the Caribbean shows a willingness to engage in shifting structural power and other levers of social justice, an area of her funding IP recently explored.

Yield Giving has supported 16 interconnected organizations in Brazil, including with a $5 million gift to BrazilFoundation, a mobilization network that works in the areas of equality, social justice and economic opportunity.

The country — and the region — is also home to significant work in climate change and environmental justice, as covered in depth by IP’s Michael Kavate. Scott’s recent environmental gifts in the region include $2.2 million to the Health and Happiness Project Brasilian Amazon, a sustainable community development initiative that includes policy integration and citizenship, and $5 million for Fundo Casa Socioambiental, an environmental fund working on philanthropic engagement around climate change.

Yield Giving has recently expanded its portfolio of gifts in the region through six partners in Peru, Mexico and Columbia. This time, the emphasis is on gender equity.

Two are headquartered in Peru. FIMI, short for Foro Internacional de Mujeres Indígenas, is a global network of “leader and activist indigenous women organizations around the world,” working to increase clout and capacity at the local, regional and national level. Programs include political advocacy as well as work through FIMI’s philanthropic arm, the AYNI Fund, which focuses on female wellbeing, reciprocity, leadership and culture. Since its founding, FIMI has been involved with more than 100 Indigenous-women-led projects originating in Asia, Africa, Latin and North America, the Arctic and the Pacific. 

The other Peruvian recipient, Laboratoria, is an ed tech organization that began as a pilot project by 15 students in Lima. Today, its programs reach across Chile, Mexico, Brazil, Columbia and Ecuador, lifting the lives of thousands of women in Latin America through tech teaching and training. Success for Laboratoria will mean overcoming deeply embedded stereotypes and socioeconomic barriers for women, and taking action to help them join a fast-growing digital economy. Laboratoria Founder Mariana Costa Checa said Scott’s $4 million investment will help the next generation of women to “dream big” and allow the organization “to build for the long term, reminding us that Laboratoria is here to stay, just like women in technology.”

In Mexico, which Yield Giving recipients cited as a geographic focus 11 times, Scott has supported GIRE, a self-described feminist human rights organization that has spent three decades helping people exercise their reproductive rights. GIRE started by disseminating scientific, objective and secular information on abortion, and went on to include contraception and assisted reproduction work, as well as measures against obstetric violence and maternal death.

Also in Mexico, and also addressing gender inequity, Scott supported Instituto de Liderazgo Simone de Beauvoir, or ILSB. It strengthens the social agency of Afro-Mexican women by advocating for sexual and reproductive rights and developing leaders. ILSB also works at the intersection of gender and territory, supporting the 16 million Indigenous women who live in threatened rural locations in Mexico. 

Meanwhile, Vision y Compromiso’s work in Mexico and Guatemala supports better health outcomes by standing behind the community health workers and promottore — or promoters — that make essential connections between communities and health and social providers.

Reproductive rights are also a focus in Columbia through the Bogotá-based organization Fondo Lunaria Mujer, which conducts empowerment programming. Currently, 3 in 10 young women in Columbia are unemployed, while three-quarters of those working earned less than 219,000 pesos in 2021 — the equivalent of about $45 dollars a month. The organization is conducting a campaign to help them engage in new economic ventures through projects that challenge inequality at a structural level.

South Asia

Sixty of Scott’s gifts to date are reported to serve South Asia. Of the 60, 22 identify India as an area of service, a country whose population of 1.4 billion is set to surpass China’s in the coming months. Scott has been funding in the country since 2019 through a gift to Educate Girls.

In mid-2021, at a time of burgeoning COVID numbers, she announced funding for a balanced portfolio of 13 organizations that work across public health, gender, education and economic development.

The latest collection of eight recipients are CBOs working to address gender inequities and help the disenfranchised gain a stake in India’s staggering economic potential. Several address justice and equality.

Coro India takes a community-based approach to reaching and mainstreaming the country’s most marginalized and oppressed populations, working against discriminatory factors like caste, religion and sexual orientation. What originally started as an adult literacy program in the slums of Mumbai a quarter-century ago has grown to cover grassroots issues like female empowerment and government advocacy. 

Ibtada, which works in Rajasthan, also empowers the women within its reach through grassroots civic action. Its gender work moves from childhood through adolescence and womanhood, with interventions at each stage of growth, from education to training on financial inclusion and credit services. Scott’s $3 million investment will also help the organization teach about rights and responsibilities, creating autonomous female champions who can be their own advocates.

Scott’s equity funding in India also includes helping people living with physical disabilities close the job opportunity gap. EnAble India, which got $8 million, operates programs that provide counseling and job training for jobs at more than 700 companies. In all, it hopes to catalyze change for 25 million Indians with disabilities by 2030.

Scott’s digital empowerment support extends to a wide range of population segments in India. The Digital Empowerment Foundation, or DEF, is a Delhi-based nonprofit that helps build the digital literacy and tools to help Indians access better education, health and work outcomes. After two decades, it’s grown to operate 2,000 Community Information Resource Centers. They, in turn, support a 10,000-strong network of “digital foot soldiers” that work across rural, tribal and marginalized areas in 24 states. Scott’s $10 million gift will also help operate technical programs for women and children in Uttar Pradesh, a program that also receives support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The education and security of India’s children also remains a priority. A $3 million investment in Study Hall Foundation (SHEF) will help provide a quality education to underprivileged youth, particularly girls. Its five-year plan aims to help 1.12 million more children transition to higher education while reducing child marriage and gender-based violence. SHEF runs a network of six schools and outreach programs, all of which use feminist-based instruction and gender sensitization to empower the girls it keeps at the center of its work. SHEF is also supported by Echidna Giving, Brookings and the Global Girls Alliance.

Scott also turned to the Aangan Trust to protect vulnerable children with a $4 million investment in its community-based protection systems to ward against child trafficking, child marriage, violence and hazardous working conditions. To do that, it works across five pivotal systems: police, school, residences, urban municipalities, and community systems within nine identified child harm hotspots, from Maharashtra to Nagaland. 

Global

Though less than 30 NPOs getting Scott money chose the “global” category to characterize their work as a whole, the keyword “global” was identified as an area of service 109 times in the database, again showing the interconnectedness of global initiatives. Here are several examples of Scott’s self-identified “global” recipients.

Informal women workers around the globe got a boost when Scott backed Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing, or WIEGO, a global network that focuses entirely on empowering the 61% of the world’s workers who make their living in the informal economy. The $7 million investment it received will help women workers secure fair incomes and safe working environments, and boost efforts to expand the kind of research and knowledge that can be used to influence government at a policy level.

Global literacy and girls’ education got a $25 million boost via Room to Read, which has helped more than 23 million children worldwide learn to read and write, particularly in areas of Africa and India. The organization says that 750 million people throughout the world are illiterate. Two thirds of them are women and girls.

A $10 million investment in the Global Fund for Children will help the organization work with CBOs around the globe to help children thrive and understand their rights. Over 20 years, it has invested more than $56 million in more than 1,000 community-based organizations across Asia, the Americas, Africa, Europe and Eurasia. The issues of child trafficking, gender equality, youth empowerment and education all sit within its sights.

Lastly, as an example of an evidence-based approach to global development, take Yield Giving’s support for the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, or 3ie. Its core work is developing impact evaluations for international development programs in low- and middle-income countries. Outcomes are intended to inform policies and practices for use by decision-makers, including governments.

Calling Scott’s $4.5 million in unrestricted funding for 3ie “hugely motivating,” Executive Director Marie Gaarder said it will help 3ie further its “mission of improving lives through evidence-informed decision-making,” while committing to leveraging internal partnerships.

Overall, even though the greater part of Scott’s giving has gone to organizations in the U.S., Yield Giving’s global work tells a far more significant story than the percentages show and demonstrates how investing in a more equitable future knows no borders.