The Impact of MacKenzie Scott’s Open Call Grants

MacKenzie Scott’s Yield Giving recently announced the results of its open call for grant applications, which began last year. Originally, Scott designated $1 million in unrestricted funding for 250 nonprofits. The open call itself was unprecedented for Scott, whose team typically researches organizations and quietly gives the funds to the nonprofits it chooses.

To be eligible for the grants, Yield Giving required nonprofits to have an annual operating budget between $1 million and $5 million for at least two of the last four fiscal years, according to a press release from Lever of Change, the management platform for the open call. This requisite  ensured that smaller nonprofits that typically don’t have as much support as larger organizations had a better chance to receive funding.

In a turn of events, Yield Giving increased both the number of grantees and grant amounts. Instead of 250 $1 million gifts, Yield Giving awarded $2 million to 279 nonprofits and $1 million to 82 nonprofits, bringing the total to $640 million — more than double the anticipated amount.

Yield Giving Application Process

The application process for the Yield Giving grants began with a narrative application, something that is fairly standard in philanthropy, said Sharon Content, founder and president of Children of Promise, NYC, an organization dedicated to supporting the children of incarcerated parents. Yield Giving required the more than 6,000 applicants to share information about their mission, community, projected impact, financials and more.

Eligible nonprofits had to score five other applications using provided rubrics; each nonprofit ultimately received scores from five other organizations. To preserve the integrity of the scoring process, nonprofits received anonymized applications to score, meaning they could only see responses and not the name of the applying organization, Content said. However, once they finished reviewing the required applications, they could see how others scored them.

“This was a very unique opportunity and experience,” Content said. “You don't usually get to see how you're scored. You usually just got the grant or you didn't.”

“I felt it brought some insight because other nonprofits are able to score very differently than independent evaluators who may not know anything about the nonprofit sector,” she added. “They may not know anything about the challenges, the concerns and issues that nonprofits may have.”

After the peer review, an external evaluation panel of 454 consultants, educators, foundation staff and others reviewed the top 1,000 applicants. Again, five parties reviewed each of these applicants. Then, Scott and the Yield Giving team selected awardees from among the top-rated nonprofits. They allotted $2 million gifts to organizations, such as Children of Promise, NYC, that were rated highest by the external review panel; they awarded $1 million gifts to organizations in the second tier of scores, according to a Lever of Change announcement on the open call.

Scott’s Impact on Recipients

All told, the process took nine months from application in June 2023 to selection in March 2024. Content’s initial thought when she got the news?

“In all honesty, I really thought we could have easily been [one of] those that didn't receive,” she said. “After nine months, you're hopeful, and I did think for a few minutes, ‘Wow, you know, we got it, but then there were so many who didn't.’ And I know what it feels like — you're applying for funding, you're amongst thousands of applications and you don't get it.”

But soon, she found her thoughts turned to what this gift, being the largest the organization has ever received, could do.

Organizational Changes

Content said it was an honor to be chosen as a recipient, and said she got right to work using the funds to hire a senior management team, which Children of Promise, NYC, had never had.

“I've been wearing the CEO hat, the director of finance, the director of HR — I've been wearing a lot of hats,” Content said. “It really took a lot of time that I couldn't wear the CEO hat for the amount of time that's really necessary.”

She also gave her staff bonuses, which was never possible before the funding.

“Now, the morale at the organization is at an all-time high, especially after COVID, which was really very challenging for the organization,” Content said. “That's the other aspect that this award has allowed us to do. It really not only builds morale, [it] really brings some energy back to the [organization].”

Programmatic Changes

Aside from organizational investments, Content said the funds are strengthening and expanding their programs.

“Our model is very innovative in that we are co-located with a mental health wellness center, so we provide mental health services in collaboration with youth development, specifically for a target population,” Content said. “So the funding also allows us now to provide services to more scholars. We're definitely able to increase the quality of programming, meaning quality in that … expanding it to now have additional specialists that provide activities. We just got one [March 27], it was ballet.”

Content also said that the funds are going to help Children of Promise, NYC, expand its services to new areas. Specifically, the organization wants to reach children of incarcerated parents in states with the highest incarceration rates: California, Florida, Texas, Ohio, and Georgia.

“In those five states, we are going to provide free summer camp for children of incarcerated parents — a two-week pop-up summer camp,” Content said. “... And this is our model, this is what we've been doing for 15 years.”

Scott’s Impact on the Sector

Each recipient of the Yield Giving open call grants may have a similar story to Children of Promise, NYC. In particular, since the open call targeted smaller nonprofits, the gifts are already having a great impact.

“I really like that she's starting to do this open call because I feel like a lot of organizations that may have been overlooked in the past now got at least the opportunity to be seen and be evaluated,” said Pamala Wiepking, associate professor of philanthropic studies at Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and full professor of societal significance of charitable lotteries at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Wiepking said that open calls are standard within philanthropy, but what is notable about Scott’s gifts — which now total $16.5 billion, per the Associated Press — is its unrestricted nature.

“Giving this funding unrestricted at a level that most of those organizations haven't seen before will allow them to move the needle in so many ways,” Wiepking said. “One concern that sometimes people have is, will these organizations be able to handle these large gifts? But the Center for Effective Philanthropy has been following MacKenzie Scott's gifts, and they don't see any evidence that there are issues with the size of the gifts for the organizations receiving it.”

Unrestricted giving is not unique to Scott, nor should her giving stand as a model for others, said Wiepking. Several organizations have a history granting unrestricted gifts, such as the Ford Foundation. However, Wiepking sees unrestricted giving as a better way of grantmaking.

She explained that while grant-making organizations have “pretty big ideas” of how they want to make an impact, their grants are often limited in scope — such as project-based funding — making it more difficult for nonprofits to achieve these larger missions.

“That doesn't align with each other, and giving in an unrestricted way is more often aligned with big change,” Wiepking said. “… Ideally, more organizations would consider how they're giving and their funding strategy and how well that aligns with their mission and theory of change.”