Billionaire philanthropist and author MacKenzie Scott announced Tuesday she is giving $640 million to 361 small nonprofits that responded to an open call for applications.
Yield Giving’s first round of donations is more than double what Scott had initially pledged to give away through the application process. Since she began giving away billions in 2019, Scott and her team have researched and selected organizations without an application process and provided them with large, unrestricted gifts.
In a brief note on her website, Scott wrote she was grateful to Lever for Change, the organization that managed the open call, and the evaluators for “their roles in creating this pathway to support for people working to improve access to foundational resources in their communities. They are vital agents of change.”
Billionaire philanthropy is undemocratic and governments just need to tax better and put that GDP towards things we prioritize together as nations
But where will we get the classic “Billionaire saves orphans from orphan crushing machine” that never follows up on who built the orphan crushing machine?
Instead we’d just get the classic news headline “Imagine the worst person you can, we found that guy and he’s getting free money from the government welfare program” Which I would add barely happens to most CEOs and billionaires today (they do own most the press, after all)