“Game-Changing” Gifts from MacKenzie Scott Boost Educators’ Ambitions — and Hopes for the Future
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Breakthrough collaborative is one of mackenzie scott’s latest education grantees. Photo courtesy of Breakthrough collaborative.
It’s head-spinning to watch MacKenzie Scott give her fortune away. From the beginning, Inside Philanthropy has followed closely as the novelist and former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has engaged in an unprecedented giving spree.
Scott, who is worth $35.6 billion according to Forbes’ latest count, has given for climate justice causes in regions stretching from Massachusetts to Micronesia. She has supported groups fighting mosquito-borne diseases around the globe, women’s rights in Asia, and racial equity and human rights in Brazil. In her most recent Medium post (her favored form of communication) in March, Scott identified the 465 nonprofits she’d given to since June 2021, groups that champion a range of causes including criminal justice reform, reproductive rights, the care economy, racial equity, veterans issues, Indigenous rights and more, as IP reported.
It’s impossible to keep up: As I write this, we learned that Scott just gave $15 million for eyeglasses for low income people in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and $85 million to the Girl Scouts, the largest donation the organization has ever received. All this recent activity makes it seem likely that we’ll be getting another blog post — or maybe even the long-promised online database — outlining hundreds of other grants.
Education has been another major priority in Scott’s philanthropy, and her K-12 giving doesn’t appear to be slowing down. We touched base with two recent recipients of multimillion-dollar gifts from Scott — a national education nonprofit and a school district. In one sense, they’re very different grantees, but both exemplify the commitment to education equity and students of color that drives Scott’s education giving, along with concern over student wellness in the long tail of the pandemic.
As we’ve heard from other grantees, both recipients said the gifts would be game-changing. The dollar amounts are consequential, of course, but both also indicated that in a field short on resources, glamour and public recognition, the affirmation the gifts represent is almost as transformative.
Checking the spam filter and waiting for the phone to ring
In September, Vince Marigna, the CEO of Breakthrough Collaborative, had just exited a plane when he got the call informing him that MacKenzie Scott was giving the organization $5 million. Representatives of the Bridgespan Group, which advises and represents Scott, had met with Marigna and his team several months earlier to learn more about the group’s work.
“We were told that it’d be about two months before we heard back,” Marigna said. “I’ll be transparent: For about two months I was checking my spam filter, making sure I wasn’t missing anything. And then the email came in while I was in flight. It was encouraging, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up. It was just, you know, ‘We thank you so much for your work, we would love to follow up with you on our conversation from two months ago. Might you be available within the next 24 to 48 hours?’ Then, after an hour on the ground in San Francisco, I hopped on the call with the point person from the team and they shared the incredible news with us.”
The Breakthrough Collaborative’s tagline — “Inspiring Students. Developing Teachers.” — describes the two pillars of its work. The organization, through affiliate groups in 24 cities across the country, works closely with traditionally underrepresented students, beginning in middle school, to ensure their academic success. The program provides year-round academic and social-emotional support for participating students through high school and even college, in some cases.
Breakthrough’s “near-peer” teaching fellow program, the largest pre-professional teaching program in the country, provides teaching experience for more than 1,100 undergraduates a year. Fellows, who work alongside professional educators, receive a minimum of 100 hours of in-classroom teaching experience, curriculum support, and professional guidance. A primary goal of the program is to increase diversity in the teaching profession. Despite research demonstrating the benefits of having teachers of color in the classroom for all students, “just 20% of public school teachers in America are people of color, while over 50% of students are children of color,” according to Breakthrough materials.
The organization, which was created over 40 years ago, shows impressive results. Students who participate in the program are 50% more likely “to directly enroll in a four-year college or university than high school graduates nationwide, regardless of socio-economic background. Once they enroll, they graduate at the same rate as their high-income peers,” according to the website. Fifty-five percent of its teaching fellows go on to teach, and 76% pursue careers in education.
Recipients of Scott’s gifts aren’t told why they are chosen, but Vince Marigna suspects it has to do with two research briefs the organization published during the pandemic.
“The white papers reflected the efficacy of our program, especially within the pandemic,” Marigna said. “They show how the near-peer mentoring model works in a virtual setting, and really helped our students feel a sense of connection and a sense of community during one of the most difficult times in their lives. So while we don’t know exactly, our white papers did receive a lot of attention.”
As we’ll see in the big school district gift, the commitment to Breakthrough underscores Scott’s prioritization of racial equity and boosting performance and opportunity for students of color, along with support for students’ mental health and wellbeing. In contrast to the district gift, however, it demonstrates an openness to a big, data-driven national program.
To plan how the new funds should be used (Scott puts no restrictions on gifts), Breakthrough is creating a committee that will include representatives of its affiliates, national offices, and program alums. “We want to be intentional and strategic about how the money will be spent, since this is a critical opportunity to advance our mission,” Marigna said. “The allocation committee will help us set direction there.”
Marigna hopes that the acknowledgement that Scott’s gift represents will draw more philanthropic attention. “This is the largest single gift in Breakthrough’s history, and the attention and the honor of being a recipient of this funding — we definitely would like to use this in a way that will attract more funders to support our work,” he said. “We have big aspirations for the future of our programming and our potential growth. It’s our hope that this will help us unlock additional large-scale gifts for us to be able to maximize our impact across the country.”
Incredibly game changing
The Fresno Unified School District was preparing for a gala celebration when leaders received word that MacKenzie Scott was giving the district $20 million. The celebration was the kick-off event for the brand new Foundation for Fresno Unified Schools, and Superintendent Bob Nelson was planning to announce that the fledgling organization had raised $200,000 in college scholarships. Nelson was thrilled to be able to announce the $200,000 sum, which is a lot of money for a low-income school district, but that news was overshadowed by the gift from Scott.
“It’s just incredibly game-changing,” Nelson said. “People tend to think of Fresno as the downtrodden armpit of California; they don’t associate it with philanthropic interests or as worthy of consideration from a national funder. So this is overwhelming. Obviously, you don’t apply to MacKenzie Scott. They’re so discreet about it, you’re kind of left to your own devices to put the dots together as to how you even merited consideration. But I’m so thankful; this is a really good thing for residents and for kids in the Central Valley that anybody would be extolling the virtues of Fresno and specifically Fresno Unified. I mean, that’s a beautiful thing.”
Nelson has a jokey, self-deprecating style — regarding his appointment as superintendent after working in the district as a teacher, vice principal, principal, and chief of staff, he told his predecessor, “I was kind of the least-detested available choice.” Still, his assessment of Fresno’s image, even among its own residents, has some truth to it. Despite being located in the Central Valley, where much of the nation’s food is grown, poverty is widespread. In fact, Fresno Unified is the second-most impoverished major urban school district in the U.S., and the most impoverished in California. Ninety percent of students in the district, the third largest in the state, qualify for subsidized meals.
Fresno Unified appears to be the first school district in the U.S. to receive funding from MacKenzie Scott, although no one knows for sure, as Scott isn’t legally required to disclose grantees. Either way, dropping a huge gift on one lower-income school district, with no strings attached, signals Scott’s ongoing departure from the highly strategic, top-down tendencies of mega-K-12 donors of the past, who have frequently sought to disrupt, reform or rewrite the way public education is carried out.
As to why Fresno Unified, in particular, was a recipient, like Marigna, Nelson doesn’t know for sure. Scott’s representatives told him they’d heard about good things happening in the district, and he suspects they may be referring to several recent initiatives.
The district recently announced a path-breaking dual-enrollment program with Benedict College, a historically Black college in South Carolina, for example. Participants can earn credit that can be used at Benedict or a California community college, and are guaranteed admission to Benedict. Nelson said the district is in preliminary discussions with St. Augustine’s University in North Carolina, about building a satellite HBCU campus in the Central Valley. “Maybe we become the center for Black collegiate excellence in the Valley,” he said. “Wouldn’t that be awesome?”
Nelson also pointed to the district’s student mental health program. Fresno’s McLane High School has a staff of psychologists and social workers, and has received widespread attention, including from California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Newsom selected the high school as the venue to announce his $4.7 billion Master Plan for Kids’ Mental Health program in August. “McLane High School in Fresno is providing mental health resources that our kids need and is a model for what we hope to achieve,” Newsom tweeted.
Scott’s gift will allow the new foundation to create an endowment, and to more than quadruple college scholarships. “I’m sure other interests will surface, but fundamentally, the idea is that this provides college opportunities for our youth,” Nelson told Ed Source.
Nelson would like to thank MacKenzie Scott, but isn’t quite sure how.
“I’m trying to figure out if there’s a formal way to just send gratitude,” he said. “We may be able to take video images of some of the students who directly benefit from her charitable giving, and share that back to show the impact of this on the Central Valley.”
Echoing Marigna’s sentiments about the Breakthrough gift, a major component of that impact is in the message it sends about the district.
“You know, Fresno Unified is a $1.7-billion-dollar organization, we’re the biggest employer between Bakersfield and Sacramento. So $20 million, while a huge sum of money, is not out of the realm of stuff we talk about. But the real value is having somebody in national philanthropy say, ‘Yeah, we’re going to take a flier on Fresno, we really believe in the work that’s going on here.’ That is immeasurable for us, quite honestly. That’s probably worth more than the $20 million, if that’s possible.”
