What Kind of Progressive Donor Is MacKenzie Scott Turning Out to Be?

A parade in Austin, Texas hosted by Mexic-Arte Museum, a recent grantee. Photo: ShengYing Lin/shutterstock

A parade in Austin, Texas hosted by Mexic-Arte Museum, a recent grantee. Photo: ShengYing Lin/shutterstock

When MacKenzie Scott sent shockwaves around the nonprofit world with her first set of grants nearly a year ago, we felt confident in characterizing her as the biggest progressive philanthropist in the United States. As a third round of grants brings her total up to $8.5 billion, Scott is still steering clear of the term “progressive,” but she’s also ticking a lot of the boxes. 

From the start, Scott has given high-dollar, unrestricted gifts to organizations selected with an equity lens in mind. In particular, racial equity and justice have taken center stage in Scott’s philanthropy, a pattern fully reinforced by her latest round of $2.7 billion. Scott has also repeatedly emphasized the progressive mantra that those closest to problems must be empowered in the search for solutions. “People struggling against inequities deserve center stage in stories about change they are creating,” she wrote in her latest Medium post, titled “Seeding by Ceding.”

Scott’s progressive bent is also on clear display in her strengthening critique of plutocracy, still a rare move among America’s billionaires. Even as her gargantuan giving makes no discernible dent in a net worth buoyed by continual Amazon growth, Scott has moved from the polite observation that “anyone’s personal wealth is the product of a collective effort” to a much more forceful argument. 

“The social structures that inflate wealth” stand in the way of people facing down inequity, she wrote in her latest post, going on to say that “it would be better if disproportionate wealth were not concentrated in a small number of hands.”

Between her words and the substance of her giving, Scott is at once furthering philanthropy’s often-muted progressive tendencies and challenging her fellow super-rich to embrace progressive critiques of the sector. But even as this third round cements Scott’s progressive bona fides, it’s worth asking: Exactly what kind of progressive donor is MacKenzie Scott?

The story unfolds

One aspect of Scott’s grantmaking that hasn’t received much comment is how thematic and episodic it has been. Sure, these grants have gone out on a regular basis throughout 2020 and 2021, and have only been announced in bursts. But even as we ponder what they might add up to in terms of a long-term giving project, those three tranches are quite distinct. 

“This year of giving began with exposure to leaders from historically marginalized groups fighting inequities,” Scott wrote of her debut grants. For the second round, the emphasis was on COVID relief and direct aid. And this most recent round focused on nonprofits working in “areas that have been neglected.”

Even as her critique of wealth intensifies, it’s less clear whether Scott’s progressive giving project—if that’s what it is—was already outlined prior to that first announcement, or if it’s developing on the fly. Though Scott is clearly making an effort to give in a way that shifts power, the answer to that question has implications for just how bottom-up this billionaire-driven giving project might turn out.

Take the particulars of Scott’s first round. All in all, it covered a fairly diverse spread of liberal and progressive causes—racial equity, economic mobility, gender equity, global development, climate change, functional democracy and so on. There was a clear focus on movement building in categories like racial equity, economic mobility and functional democracy, with groups like the Movement for Black Lives, the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the voting-rights-focused State Infrastructure Fund receiving grants. Categories like climate change and gender equity had less of a movement focus. Scott also made history with her groundbreaking support for historically Black colleges and universities (HCBUs) in that debut round.

Round two, centered on COVID relief, was by far the largest tranche so far at no less than $4.1 billion. It was also the least explicitly progressive in many ways. Happily, grants in the second round still comprised general operating support and prioritized communities hard-hit by the pandemic—often low-income communities of color. But unlike the first round’s advocacy focus, the second round focused on direct aid while only secondarily addressing “long-term systemic inequities that have been deepened by the crisis,” as Scott put it. 

One of the most progressive aspects of the second round may be Scott’s willingness to experiment with direct cash relief, a philanthropic trend that took hold in 2020 and may or may not stick. Scott grantees in that space include Give Directly’s Project 100, the Family Independence Initiative, Mission Asset Fund’s Immigrant Families Fund and Grantmakers Concerned With Immigrants and Refugees’ California Immigrant Resilience Fund.

What we can tell from round three

Scott’s third round of grants is quite distinct from both her first and second, and offers more insight into her vision of progressivism. One big development is just how heavily Scott leaned into the arts. As our own Mike Scutari has observed, it’s surprising in retrospect just how little arts and culture figured into Scott’s first two announcements, given her literary bent.

She more than remedied that omission in her third round with at least 60 grants to organizations working directly in the realm of arts and culture. And this isn’t the usual white-led opera houses and symphonies. The vast majority of Scott’s arts grantees fit a progressive mold—BIPOC-led, often community-based groups whose creative endeavors are deeply cognizant of the intersectional play of identity, narrative, and, yes, politics, in American life. In her Medium post, Scott laid out seven points that Scutari noted could very well serve as a guide for arts grantseekers in 2021, considering the arts not only as an end to themselves, but also as a pathway for social progress.

One of the more striking aspects of Scott’s third-round arts giving—and of her third round in general—is how much she’s leaning into racial equity and justice. That’s not surprising, given the times we live in and the way sector norms are developing, but it does signal what kind of progressive donor Scott may be going forward. 

A rough scan shows that just as with the arts, around 60 of Scott’s third-round grantees have missions that prioritize racial equity and justice in the U.S., serving or advocating for particular racial/ethnic communities or for BIPOC Americans in general. That total includes a large number of arts groups focused on particular BIPOC communities and does not include an even larger array of grantees whose work has a racial equity component—like community colleges and vocational schools, community-level service groups and philanthropy-serving organizations. 

This level of emphasis calls to mind Scott’s inaugural round, where she supported around 30 groups with missions centering racial equity. It’s also similar in that the grantees are fairly diverse in terms of which communities they serve. Still, there are some distinctions. The most obvious is a major jump in the number of AAPI-focused groups receiving Scott’s support, again unsurprising, given the national climate in 2021. 

Where both Black and (to a greater extent) Latino organizations are concerned, the third round prioritized grantees working in arts and culture. Groups serving Indigenous people were present in Scott’s first round, but the number rose in her third. Again, arts and culture organizations comprise a large portion of the list, including museums. Notably, Scott’s third round differed from her first two in that it did not include HBCUs, although it did include other colleges and nonprofits that serve underprivileged youth.

While many of the latest racial justice grantees work in an intersectional way that’s complementary with movements, the movement and advocacy grants in Scott’s third round do seem more muted than in the first, which came in the wake of a summer of protest following George Floyd’s murder. That’s not to say the third round contained no movement support around racial justice—grants went out to places like Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD), Chinese for Affirmative Action and the NDN Collective, among others. But they are few compared to the numerous grantees bringing greater racial equity to the arts. 

One notable exception is Scott’s third-round support for funds managed by Borealis Philanthropy, a key hub for progressive movement funding. Grantees included the Racial Equity in Journalism Fund, the Racial Equity in Philanthropy Fund, the Racial Equity to Accelerate Change Fund and the Emerging LGBTQ Leaders of Color Fund, all at Borealis. Scott also supported Borealis’ Communities Transforming Policing Fund and Spark Justice Fund, both concerned with overhauling the criminal justice system.

Emphases and omissions

Beyond the emphasis on racial equity, particularly in the arts, there are several other ways in which Scott’s third round of grants clarified how her progressive giving is shaping up. One I’ve already touched on: intersectionality. More than just a buzzword, intersectionality is an integral part of how many progressive nonprofits approach their work and also directly challenges the siloed, program-oriented philanthropic norm. 

Intersectionality within the context of the arts and between different kinds of racial and cultural identities was a clear focus of Scott’s third round. So were intersectionalities between race, culture and religion, touched upon in grants to places like the Pillars Fund, a funding vehicle to support American Muslims; the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber’s Repairers of the Breach; and the Jewish organization Repair the World. Gender justice and LGBTQ issues were also significant themes in Scott’s third round, both as central missions of many grantees and as issues to which a wider range of grantees speak in their work. To an even greater extent than in the first, the third round’s gender justice groups had a global rather than a U.S. focus. Grants for organizing and movement groups focused specifically on women’s rights and gender justice in the U.S. were few and far between.

Granted, this project is still just a year old, but other omissions—or near-omissions—also stand out. Given their importance to many progressives, it’s odd to see so little attention paid to the climate crisis and environmental justice. In her first round, Scott gave high-figure gifts to several “big greens,” and didn’t follow that up with much in the way of environmental support in her second. The third tranche likewise went light on green groups. 

Scott is also holding back on seeding many groups advancing progressive agendas on the think tank circuit. That includes advocacy organizations operating in spheres like fiscal policy and labor policy, economic and legal theory, regulatory policy, and in the battle to shape policy at the state level. A few exceptions from the third round are the Roosevelt Institute, MRDC and the Urban Institute. In addition, Scott hasn’t given much lately to public interest law groups and other advocates working to protect voting rights. Indeed, the democracy advocates that received a healthy boost from Scott’s first round have not enjoyed much in the way of additional largesse since then.

The advocates who did win big in Scott’s third round were those working in a familiar space—philanthropy itself. Some are more progressive than others, but many philanthropy-serving groups tend to lean left these days, and that’s certainly the case with the ones getting Scott money. As with the arts, they include several associated with particular racial groups, like ABFE, Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, and Native Americans in Philanthropy. The Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity and the Women’s Funding Network also received grants, as did CHANGE Philanthropy, Funders for LGBTQ Issues and the Neighborhood Funders Group. 

A picture emerges

While it’s possible this third round of grants is just another episode in a more expansive giving plan that’ll fill those gaps, without more knowledge about Scott and her husband Dan Jewett’s intentions, we have only these patterns to go on. And what they broadcast, at least in part, is a preference for progressive groups tackling injustice head-on by empowering people who’ve been at a historical disadvantage. Prioritizing that form of power building, or so Scott and her advisors seem to hope, will translate into impact across the broader spectrum of progressive causes, including environment, democracy, economic policy and the like. 

After a year of racial reckoning—and, for that matter, before it—that makes a lot of sense. It’s heartening to see in a philanthropic landscape that still heavily favors white-led organizations for funding. The only thing I’d add is that when you’re sitting on a pile that defies imagination and have pledged to give it away, it would also make sense to think in terms of both-and—that is, keep resourcing these grantees and also think about expanding the field to lessen the chance that systemic factors (for instance, the ineffective regulation of Wall Street) wipe out all the progress toward equity these grantees have made

It sounds like a big ask from someone who’s already shattering giving records. But it’s not impossible. Ford, the quintessential broad-tent progressive grantmaker, supports pretty much all this stuff with only a fraction of Scott’s resources. And I’m not the first one to note that despite $8.5 billion in grants and counting, Scott hasn’t dented her wealth.

The most obvious way to explain why Scott’s progressive giving looks the way it does would be that it’s meant to appear charitable and not political—that Scott, Jewett and their advisors are trammeled with the same reticence on policy matters as so many philanthropists before them. Scott did appear to distance her philanthropic project from politics in her most recent Medium post, writing, “While political pendulums swing back and forth, redistributing and re-concentrating wealth, we can choose to fund organizations with the potential to increase the impact of every dollar and hour donated by others.”

Of course, that doesn’t preclude giving that nudges those “political pendulums” toward the side of wealth redistribution. Increasingly, Scott’s whole philanthropic project is taking on a redistributive hue, especially as she straight-up criticizes the conditions under which her wealth was accumulated. 

One final point—there’s no way we can be certain this is everything. Nothing’s stopping Scott from backing edgier movement and policy groups through non-transparent DAFs or opaque 501(c)(4) contributions. Her funding through those channels, if it exists, would certainly be substantial. Sadly for those of us who care about transparency in philanthropy, there isn’t any way to tell.