Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on February 3, 2026.
MacKenzie Scott has won almost universal admiration since she began her tsunami of philanthropy — and there is a lot to like. Rather than collecting yachts or hosting gaudy extravaganzas, like some of her fellow billionaires, Scott has stayed out of the limelight while giving large sums to a dizzying array of good causes — no strings attached. By sheer dollars, her giving to date tops every other major philanthropist except Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. And she shows no signs of slowing down: She vowed to “keep at it until the safe is empty,” and with a record $7.1 billion in giving in 2025, she’s among only a handful of Giving Pledgers on track to fulfill their commitments.
But in this fraught political climate, Scott was bound to face backlash sooner or later, given her extreme wealth, generous gifts and the staggering array of grantees she has supported.
In January, an article in the conservative Washington Free Beacon featured the headline “MacKenzie Scott Sends Millions to Terror-Tied Nonprofit Network.” The headline in a Fortune article that followed the next day was less feverish — “MacKenzie Scott sends millions to nonprofit that supports anti-Israel and pro-Muslim groups, two of which are facing federal probes” — but included much of the same information.
What were the articles referring to? Both point to Scott’s gifts to social justice funder and regrantor Solidaire Network in 2021 and again in 2025, and the fact that Solidaire has, in turn, provided funding for several pro-Palestinian organizations, including Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). The articles charge or associate the organizations with antisemitism and ties to Hamas.
The Free Beacon’s tone was apoplectic, describing SJP and AMP as among the country’s “most virulent anti-Israel and anti-Semitic organizations.” Fortune strove for more balance, but pointed out that SJP and AMP “face investigations in both the House and Senate for allegedly coordinating with terror group Hamas to start anti-Israel protests in the U.S.”
Both groups have indeed been targets of congressional investigations, though such probes in the current GOP-led Congress are by their nature often highly partisan affairs. Right-wing media investigations into their funding can be seen as an allied effort, part of the broader campaign, begun before President Donald Trump’s second term but amplified by his administration, to discredit organizations and individuals that engage in constitutionally protected speech and protest against Israel or on behalf of Palestinian people. Such reporting also bolsters the rhetoric deployed by the Trump administration over the past year painting funders that support such groups as criminal or “terrorist-supporting” themselves.
Misconceptions around how philanthropy works
Part of the problem with reporting like that in Fortune and the Free Beacon is a lack of understanding of how philanthropy works — unrestricted giving in particular. Scott donates large-dollar gifts with no strings attached, but to hold her or any other general-support donor directly responsible for everything a recipient — let alone the recipient of a recipient — chooses to do with a gift is a big stretch, especially when the donor’s giving is as expansive as Scott’s.
To be sure, Scott’s team conducts extensive research into her grantees before she makes her funding decisions. That said, once the money changes hands and arrives in a regrantor’s accounts, Scott’s role in the process is at an end. In her latest round of giving last year, she gave to 186 organizations, many of which act as regrantors and will pass on her money, often pooled with money from other donors, through their own independent processes.
Solidaire Network, one of those many regrantors, is a philanthropy-serving organization created in 2013 by a group of progressive organizers and wealthy individuals who were inspired by Occupy Wall Street and other social movements. Their goal was to upend conventional philanthropy and to move money quickly and efficiently to support social justice organizations and protest movements. Solidaire is a 501c3 membership organization that boasts about 520 individual and institutional members (its network gained about 50 new members in the last six months alone), each of whom contributes at least $20,000. Since it was created, the organization has moved approximately $58 million through its pooled grantmaking and hundreds of millions as a collective network; it appears to be well ahead of schedule on its aim of moving a full billion by 2029. Solidaire received $10 million from Scott in 2021 and another gift last year for an amount it has not shared publicly to date. It provided support for AMP and SJP through its one-time Unity & Power Fund, which aims for a sustainable peace in the Israeli-Palestine conflict, in 2024. The organization does not disclose the amounts of the grants it provides.
Solidaire members rely on the organization to distribute their funds responsibly, according to strict guidelines, said Communications Director Barni Qaasim. “Every organization that we fund goes through a rigorous vetting process focused on legal compliance, their integrity and alignment with our core values of human rights, nondiscrimination and democratic freedoms,” she said. “We only support groups centered on human rights, nonviolence, democratic freedoms and nondiscrimination — nondiscrimination for everybody, even outside of their subject areas.”
An increasing number of right-wing critics of philanthropy ascribe dark motives to intermediaries like Tides and Solidaire that back progressive causes, often misunderstanding the role they and their donors play in dispensing funds and jumping to conspiratorial conclusions when those funds support causes those critics disagree with. Part of that involves focusing on high-profile funders like George Soros, the Ford Foundation, and now, it appears, Scott, to elevate the criticism — merited or not.
Conservative criticism frames all philanthropic funding for Palestinian advocacy as Hamas support
The Free Beacon and Fortune criticisms of Scott and Solidaire echo attacks by philanthropy-funded think tanks on the right. While Trump was campaigning for president a second time, the Heritage Foundation’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism published Project Esther, which it called “A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism.” Vox described the detailed plan as an addendum to Project 2025, Heritage’s map for dismantling parts of the federal government and canceling its support for NGOs and nonprofits seen as supporting liberals and progressives.
Project Esther, published in October 2024, was a response to the campus and street protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. But the Project Esther authors made no distinction between supporting the rights of Palestinian people, and backing or conspiring with Hamas. As they put it in the introduction of the report: “America’s virulently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and anti-American ‘pro-Palestinian movement’ is part of a global Hamas Support Network (HSN) that is trying to compel the U.S. government to abandon its long-standing support for Israel.”
According to the report authors, National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP or SJP) and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), along with Jewish Voice for Peace and several other groups, are all “effectively a terrorist support network.” They highlight that network’s supposed ties with a number of philanthropic funders, including Tides, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Open Society Foundations.
To “dismantle the pro-Hamas support network’s infrastructure across America,” the authors proposed deploying laws, including those covering foreign agents, racketeering, counterterrorism and hate speech. They also proposed cutting off public and private funding for the organizations in the pro-Palestine movement.
That approach has already created problems for high-profile funders on the left. Last fall, the conservative Capital Research Center asserted in a report that “Soros’ Open Society gave $80 million to pro-terror groups.” The report provided no concrete evidence of the OSF-funded groups’ supposed “pro-terrorist” activities. Nevertheless, the Justice Department then leaned on CRC’s research to open an investigation into the Open Society Foundations.
Republican congressional leaders have also initiated probes into the activities of SJP and AMP. IP reached out to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and a staffer said that investigation is ongoing.
Meanwhile, the coordinated legal assault on OSF and other progressive funders the Trump administration promised last year appears to have stalled, at least temporarily, because of legal constraints and donor concerns on both the left and the right. And the administration’s top deputies have moved on to knee-jerk assertions that those protesting ICE activities in Minnesota, including slain mother Renee Good and murdered VA nurse Alex Pretti, are “domestic terrorists.”
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Will these insinuations have a chilling effect on philanthropy?
Scott doesn’t give interviews or have a press office, so there is no way to determine specifically whether these attempts to “follow the money” will impact her future giving. Solidaire’s Qaasim was adamant that the recent criticism would not affect Solidaire’s support for SJP and AMP. “We stand by these groups and we support them,” she said. “It’s not radical to support Palestinian children being able to live in safety. Supporting Palestinian human rights is consistent with international law. It’s held by the majority of the people worldwide, and it’s our commitment to dignity and safety for all people.”
Still, there are indications that efforts to intimidate funders are having some effect. A 2025 report by Funding Freedom tracked philanthropic support for pro-Palestinian organizations and found these groups “are facing intense pressure from their own funders, including funding cuts (or threats thereof) and nonrenewals of grants based on speaking out against the genocide.”
Qaasim said she is seeing that, as well. “We’ve heard from our movement partners that they’ve lost funding,” she said. “Many of our partners don’t even work in the area but have stood up in solidarity with Palestinian human rights and the people in Gaza. They’ve had funding revoked for that — either directly or without any reason stated — and they assume that’s why.”
Meanwhile, the Heritage Foundation’s National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism recently broke with Heritage after its president, Kevin Roberts, defended Tucker Carlson’s friendly interview with white supremacist and antisemite Nick Fuentes, triggering resignations at the organization and fissures among the MAGA faithful. The task force is now an independent organization, and its leaders have vowed to put more focus on antisemitism on the right, as NPR reported.
In any case, as Qaasim pointed out, targeting philanthropy isn’t going to prevent people from supporting Palestinians. “It is a misconception to suggest that college students and other people are in the streets because of a grant someone received,” she said. “Nobody is leaving work early or dragging their kids out to the streets to protest because some nonprofit organization got a grant. They’re there because they’re horrified by the suffering in Gaza. I think it’s foolish to think that attacking funders is going to make people okay with what is going on there.”
