Five Takeaways From a Dive Into MacKenzie Scott’s Climate Giving

MacKenzie Scott is well known as a groundbreaking philanthropist, racial equity champion, billionaire, novelist, mother and the quiet force behind those magic phone calls announcing no-strings-attached seven-figure-plus checks.

As a climate action funder? Not so much.

Yet while green giving looms larger, perhaps, for other billionaires we cover (not least Scott’s ex-husband), the 54-year-old is still one of the top climate grantmakers in the world. When I compared totals a few years ago, she was in the top three. While limited data may have skewed my estimate at the time, a revised total would only drop her a couple spots, and her grantmaking has now remained at that rarefied level for several years.

Earlier this year, Scott’s Yield Giving issued its 100th climate grant. In honor of that milestone, I’ve done a quick, high-level analysis of where those awards have gone so far.

To be clear, these totals reflect the number of grantees that self-reported “climate” as one of their focus areas to Yield. In that way, they’re a measure of what the recipients believe about themselves — or at least how they want to publicly characterize their work.

Letting recipients report their own focus areas is one more way Scott is doing things differently. Another? She not only offers a public grant database (unlike some other billionaires giving through DAFs and LLCs); she also allows anyone to download its entries for their own analysis.

What does that data reveal about Yield Giving’s climate funding? To start with, such grants now total an estimated $1.1 billion. At least, that’s my best guess. Many awardees have requested that their amounts not be disclosed yet, so that number uses the average figure for the known gifts to approximate the total.

Here are five other takeaways from combing through the operation’s 100 climate-related grants.

More climate grants and dollars each year, until recently

In the early days of Scott’s operation, each year brought more climate awards. Her team made just one in 2019, when she issued a tiny slate of grants overall, but the following year, she gave out 16 such awards, then 22 in 2021. The number rose to 28 in 2022, the highest number of awards so far.

Scott’s climate grantmaking has since lost pace. The number of grants declined last year, with 24 awards in 2023. This year is better, with 11 so far, putting Yield Giving on pace for roughly 28 awards. More importantly, however, the total dollars going to climate groups appears to have fallen dramatically over the past two years.

With many recipients choosing to delay disclosure of the size of their awards, it is hard to pin down exact numbers. To get a rough estimate, I used the average climate award amount ($11.3 million) to estimate the totals for each year. What I found was that after averaging just over $300 million a year between 2020 and 2022, awards fell to less than $200 million in 2023.

More alarming? They are on pace for just $47 million this year. That may be because the operation has so far announced only its Lever for Change awards, $1 million and $2 million awards that do not add up to a lot of money. We’ll see.

Nearly half of all grants go to the United States

Scott sends a lot of checks to organizations overseas. Climate awards are no exception. Nevertheless, the United States is still the single largest recipient country, receiving 45% of all her climate grants, by my count.

The next-largest recipient nation was India (7%), followed by Brazil (5%) and Kenya (2%). Among the countries receiving single grants were Tanzania, Indonesia, Canada and China. Though it’s the world’s leading emitter, China is hardly known for its receptiveness to funding overtures from U.S. philanthropists.

Instead, many of Scott’s international dollars flow to organizations working more broadly, such as those with global focus (17%) or working regionally, including in East Asia and the Pacific (7%) or sub-Saharan Africa (4%).

Regrantors play a key role

Anecdotally, it’s been clear from early on that MacKenzie Scott was relying heavily on funds and intermediaries to move money to climate causes, just like most billionaires in the space. Now we have numbers to back up that impression.

Some 16% of climate recipients selected “regrantor” as a focus area and another 9% chose “fund.” (It seems those selections were included in the focus area category to allow groups to classify themselves in those terms, if desired.) In total, a quarter of all Yield’s climate recipients make grants to others. That compares to just 14% of all Scott grantees selecting those two classifications.

Many recipients are working outside traditional environmental areas

As I explained above, I assembled this overview by downloading a list of every Yield grantee that marked “climate” as one of their focus areas. This group’s other self-reported priorities back up a long-running anecdotal observation about Scott’s climate grantmaking: Very little of it goes to primarily climate-focused organizations, let alone groups centered on typical environmental topics.

Just two of the recipients’ top 10 reported focus areas are traditional environmental areas, based on my analysis. The leading topic was race and ethnicity, with 38% of the groups citing that focus area. Perhaps it’s telling that the top environmental category, which came second, was environmental justice, reported by 28% of recipients.

Other top issues were civic and social engagement (25%); livelihoods and workforce development (18%); and youth development (17%). All of these, of course, intersect with climate change and environmental issues, but they tend not to be the main areas of focus for traditional green groups.

Nor do recipients’ missions focus on the environment

If self-reported focus areas were not enough, the mission statements of recipients provide further proof that this is not your average group of climate grantees. After generic terms like “communities,” “people” or “mission” itself, the most common words used by recipients in their missions are “health,” “rights” and “justice.” It is only after those that “climate” shows up.

What do these numbers add up to?

Sometimes, when you take a close look at where a funder’s money is flowing, it paints a somewhat different picture than their public messaging. For Scott, while there are only a few essays to go on, the awards clearly match the spirit of her philanthropy. While her first climate grants followed a more traditional path, this area of her giving is now one more that’s defined by its intersectional approach.

That may be bad news for major climate-focused organizations hoping to get big checks from Scott for the important work they do. But it may be good news for organizations out there looking to add climate to their work, but needing an infusion of resources to do so.

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