Philanthropy the MacKenzie Scott way

A job where you get to call nonprofits and tell them you are giving them several million dollars sounds gratifying. But the people at Yield Giving have to deal with the fact that at first no one believes them. 

“We got the call in late 2023, and we thought it was fake,” said Sarah Reynolds, communications director of Habitat for Humanity. The YWCA thought the email was spam, said CEO Rickell Howard Smith. Moira Weir, CEO of United Way, was in the car when she got a call that her organization was getting $25 million, and didn’t believe it until otherwise confirmed. 

Yield Giving is the foundation MacKenzie Scott created to give away about $36 billion, her share of Amazon stock upon divorcing Jeff Bezos. 

It’s no wonder people are skeptical. Yield’s model is different. No grant applications, no requests for proposals. The money can be used for anything the organization deems important, even operating expenses. And there is minimal follow-up once the money is given. 

Scott is giving away extraordinary amounts of money very quickly, but, as she wrote in an essay on the Yield website, “Putting large donors at the center of stories on social progress is a distortion of their role.”

Yield does list online the nonprofits they’ve given to, including local organizations that have received a total of about $69 million since 2020: Habitat for Humanity of Greater Cincinnati, YMCA of Greater Cincinnati, YWCA Greater Cincinnati, Women Helping Women, United Way of Greater Cincinnati, Crossroads Health Center (now NorthStar Behavioral Health), HER Cincinnati, Easterseals Redwood, Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio and Meals on Wheels Southwest OH & Northern KY. 

These are on-the-ground, community-centered, stable organizations with proven track records in areas such as feeding people, education, protecting women from abuse, the environment and basic health care. A lot of research is done to choose them.

“They really knew a lot about my own work advocating for system-level change before they called me,” Weir said. 

“It was game-changing to get that all at once,” added Reynolds about Habitat for Humanity. “It represented over half our operating budget for a year. It gave us flexibility to move fast, be stronger and bolder. We were able to start a construction training program we’d wanted to do, move into larger land development.” 

And it came without the extra labor grantors often demand. “I don’t know if people understand the amount of work it takes to apply for grants, and to do the paperwork of reporting,” Reynolds said. “This money really came with no strings; we send in our annual report, that’s about it.” 

YWCA leaders knew exactly what to do with the $3 million they received in 2022. “We had a strategic plan to build a new domestic violence shelter in Hamilton County,” Smith said. “But we didn’t know how it was going to be funded. We also wanted to expand our equity outreach work.“ 

This money provided room for innovation. YWCA hired an equity director, and The Francie Garber Pepper Center of Healing opened in May 2025. “It’s a trauma-designed shelter for families to live together in one unit,” said Smith. It offers services to help women transition into new lives. “Families can bring their pets, because not wanting to leave pets behind is one reason women don’t leave abusive relationships.” It is now the only domestic abuse women’s shelter in Hamilton County.

The millions United Way received was used for building infrastructure, such as its 211 resource line, that will help shift poverty rates in the future, Weir said. Echoing Scott’s locally based approach, the dollars went even deeper into communities and neighborhoods, who are involved in how to use it as they see need. 

Back in the first Gilded Age, rich men like Andrew Carnegie argued that they had to be left free to make unlimited money. Then they would decide what was good for everyone else, and distribute it. That self-satisfied, patronizing attitude doesn’t fly in this age of jaw-dropping inequity.

Scott realizes no one should get this rich. Or, as she said more tactfully in an essay, “We are attempting to give away a fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change.” 

Those systems have been directing money to the top instead of spreading it to everyone. Jeff Bezos is still worth $249 billion. I’d be less polite than Scott about how he got that money. “There’s no question in my mind that anyone’s personal wealth is the product of a collective effort, and of social structures which present opportunities to some people, and obstacles to countless others,” she wrote in an essay. 

His kind of wealth makes people egotistical and out of touch. Scott, however, seems to have retained a sense of reality. Her approach is humble; she knows she can’t possibly know how 2,700 organizations around the country should approach positive change, she just knows they’re doing good work and she’s willing to help.

Polly Campbell covered restaurants and food for the Cincinnati Enquirer from 1996 until 2020. She writes monthly on a variety of topics, and she welcomes your feedback and column suggestions at “editor (at) moversmakers.org”