MacKenzie Scott's Open Call Is Live. Here's What You Need to Know

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Editor's Note: This article was originally published on March 22, 2023.

After over $14 billion in giving and nearly three years as the most talked-about philanthropist in the U.S., MacKenzie Scott has issued her first open call for applications. It’s been a long time coming, but it hasn’t exactly come as a surprise. The billionaire novelist previewed the open call when she launched her long-awaited website last December and dubbed her groundbreaking philanthropic project Yield Giving.

What wasn’t clear at the time was when, exactly, Yield Giving’s first open call would begin accepting applications. Now we know: The open call is currently live, as of yesterday, and will accept registrations through May 5. Full applications are due by June 12.

This open call is quite a radical departure from Scott’s previous modus operandi, in that we’ve actually been given a pretty good idea of what she wants to fund and how much money will be moving out the door. In a nutshell, 250 unrestricted gifts of $1 million apiece will go to organizations “working with people and in places experiencing the greatest need in the United States: communities, individuals and families with access to the fewest foundational resources and opportunities.”

Yield Giving is working with Lever for Change to administer the evaluation process, which the big-donor grant competition hub and MacArthur Foundation affiliate lays out in detail. The plan is to wrap up the entire process a year from now in March 2024, when the 250 awardees will be announced. That’ll follow a multistep review process in which fellow applicants and a panel of experts, along with Scott and her team, will pore over applications and narrow down the pool. 

In a statement posted by Lever for Change, Scott framed the open call in participatory terms: “Teams on the front lines of challenges have insights no one else can offer, so there are three big headlines here in my heart: Community changemakers can nominate themselves. Community changemakers get feedback from their peers. Community changemakers have a powerful role in funding decisions.”

This open call is a definite waypoint in Scott’s journey toward more transparent, possibly more conventional forms of philanthropy — although the hallmarks of her remarkable giving project remain, such as large, unrestricted gifts and a focus on lifting up underserved communities. It also feels like something of a test run: $250 million actually isn’t all that much in Scott world. Our assumption is that Yield Giving’s more typical process of “quiet research to identify candidate organizations” will continue alongside the open call.

What’s Scott looking to fund?

That’s the $14 billion question we’ve all been pondering every six months or so since that first Medium post back in 2020. But in this case, we’re getting a clearer picture ahead of time. 

For one thing, applications for the open call are limited to organizations based in the United States or in U.S. territories. And at least 90% of an applicant’s work must take place in the U.S. That’s a bit of a departure from Scott’s last several rounds, which included an expanding palette of global recipients in places like Brazil, India, Africa and elsewhere. In this case, it’s probably simpler to stick to the States for an initial open call, but one does wonder whether other internationally focused grant competitions are in the works. 

In addition to independent nonprofits in the U.S., eligibility extends to fiscally sponsored nonprofit organizations, private operating foundations and tribal governments.

Note also the types of entities ineligible to apply. That includes typical categories like individuals, government agencies and for-profit companies. But it also includes “educational entities such as schools, colleges, junior colleges or universities.” Apparently, Scott’s vast record of education giving will be less of a factor here. Also ineligible are organizations that have received Scott money before, “either directly or through one or more donor-advised funds established by [Yield Giving].” That includes local affiliates of national organizations that have received gifts in the past. 

There’s also a budgetary stipulation. Eligible applicants must verify an annual operating budget between $1 million and $5 million for at least two of the last four fiscal years. That reflects the open call’s aim to fund community-focused groups whose “explicit purpose” is to advance people of “meager or modest means,” while also backing organizations with demonstrable track records.

In terms of actual issue areas, there appear to be few hard-and-fast limits. The open call cites healthcare, housing, education and job training (no schools, though), asset ownership and civic engagement as some sample areas of focus, along with “other pathways.”

How will decisions be made?

Lever for Change, which has quickly become a go-to platform for super-wealthy donors looking to hold grant competitions, has always been good about outlining procedural elements, and this one is no different. Following the application deadline on June 12, a three-phase review process will extend through this fall. That’ll begin with an administrative review, where applications will be verified for eligibility (Yield Giving offers an organizational readiness tool to help prospective applicants check whether they can apply).

The next two phases are more substantive. First comes a participatory review, where each applicant scores five other applications according to a rubric Yield Giving provides. The criteria are about what you’d expect: rating how equity-focused applicants are, what their track records look like, whether they represent and reflect the communities they serve, and whether they have enough organizational capacity.

Following that, 1,000 applications get the same treatment from an evaluation panel of 158 people, all of whom are listed here. Again, expert review panels are a fairly common feature of high-dollar grant competitions. But what makes this panel stand out is that this is MacKenzie Scott’s grant competition, and prior to this, we’ve heard little concrete information on actual individuals participating in the Yield Giving decision-making process, besides nonspecific references to the Bridgespan Group and other consultancies, nonprofit leaders and other donors. 

While the list of folks on this evaluation panel may or may not overlap with the unnamed consultants and advisors who’ve assisted Scott thus far, it’s still interesting to note who’s been tapped to participate. We’ll be digging deeper, but off the bat, these are predominantly people with leadership roles at private foundations (including community foundations and the giving vehicles of living donors) as well as academia. Although they’re outnumbered by foundation representatives, there’s also a good number of consultants, including, notably, three from Dalberg Advisors. Nonprofit leaders are also well-represented, with a few people from the private sector filling out the list.

After the evaluation panel rates the 1,000 leading applications using the same rubric, Scott and her team will make their final determinations in late 2023 and early 2024. 

More conventional giving ahead?

When Lever for Change CEO Cecilia Conrad hinted earlier this year at a new donor challenge to debut in the spring of 2023, we might have guessed it would be Scott’s. The celebrated philanthropist is no stranger to Lever for Change, and has a history with it dating back at least to 2020, when she and Melinda French Gates funded its $30 million gender equity challenge Equality Can’t Wait, along with Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies. Scott has also backed Lever for Change directly to the tune of $8 million.

A competition like this is a surprising departure in one sense, in that a hallmark of Scott’s giving to date has been virtually no burden placed on recipients. While Lever for Change takes some steps to mitigate these dynamics, competitions are notorious for their lengthy, elaborate processes that for most, yield no funding at all. Considering Scott has become arguably the most prominent philanthropist in the world, some robust process of sorting and filtering was unavoidable. Here, Yield Giving has opted for one that invites a lot of people to the table to help make the decisions, in keeping with her preference for deferring to others.

Nonetheless, it is a departure, and in that respect at least, Scott’s becoming less the mysterious mega-donor who descends out of the blue with a multimillion-dollar gift, and more an integral member of the growing cadre of living billionaires turning to alternative giving infrastructure like Lever for Change, often in lieu of traditional foundations. 

At the same time, Scott’s partnership with the MacArthur Foundation affiliate, along with this procedurally detailed and rule-laden open call itself, shows us she’s at least somewhat willing to embrace more conventional philanthropic forms. In the end, though, the nature and scale of this support — 250 unrestricted $1 million gifts to community-focused groups — is still classic MacKenzie Scott.