Where is MacKenzie Scott’s Global Giving Headed? Here’s What the Latest Data Tells Us
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streets of beawar, india. Sumit Saraswat/shutterstock
Numbers always tell a story. For MacKenzie Scott’s global giving, the Yield Giving database reveals a sustained level of giving and consistent issue priorities.
The giving trends that emerged when the database launched last year remained constant across the global gifts that were part of the $2.1 billion in giving that Scott made in 2023, announced in a December update. Her pattern of prioritizing healthcare, climate solutions and equity overall — and for women in particular — continued in 2023. So did her commitment to evidence-based approaches and backing local leadership within underserved communities, something she once referred to as work “of and by” the people she supports.
And while sub-Saharan Africa was still the geographic region that drew the largest focus, South Asia was not far behind in 2023, reflecting a heightened level of interest in that part of the world last year.
Scott’s global giving has also settled into a steady 20% of individual gifts made annually, up from 2020, when the number of gifts to global organizations working outside of North America represented just 9% of the total. In 2021, 22% of organizations reported global geographies of service. The following year, 19% of organizations made the same claim. And in 2023, 18% of organizations characterized their work as occurring internationally.
Here’s what the data says about where and how her funding is reaching communities around the globe.
Caveats in the numbers
When Scott first launched her enormous giving project, we learned about her activity via posts that shared her current thinking, giving totals and recipients. Along the way, her writing on the topic of public reporting noted that she sought to balance the privacy of recipients with the need for transparency — ultimately landing on self-reporting issue areas and the Yield Giving database we know today.
Scott’s to be commended for taking that important step, but Yield’s approach does pose challenges when it comes to interpreting the data. That’s partly because philanthropy overall works across broad categories that can be difficult to parse, but also because the trust-based and unrestricted nature of her giving can make it hard to discern specific giving priorities. The Yield database relies on the vagaries of self-reporting by hundreds of organizations, which often results in data that captures the broad focus and service areas of organizations as a whole, rather than the specific programs or initiatives they’re prioritizing through Scott’s support.
Giving levels are also hard to pin down. Yield Giving recognizes the impact that publicly disclosing large gifts can have — especially for smaller organizations — and defers to recipients to decide when they want to share the amounts they received. But as a result, a full third (22) of the 67 organizations that received Scott’s global gifts in 2023 elected to “delay disclosure.” Across all years, the organizations that received 104 of the 342 gifts tagged as global chose not to share numbers.
Africa remains a priority, South Asia draws more attention
In terms of the number of organizational gifts, sub-Saharan Africa remains Scott’s top geographical focus, with some shifts in regional priorities.
Of the roughly 276 global gifts Scott’s made through 2022, 104 have been focused on sub-Saharan Africa. Gifts across Latin America and the Caribbean came in second at 77. South Asia received 60 gifts through 2022, including a sizable cluster in India. East Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and Europe and Central Asia each drew 20 gifts or fewer.
In 2023, however, geographical priorities shifted between second- and third-place geographies. Sub-Saharan Africa still led with 27 gifts. But South Asia was not far behind with 25, swapping places with Latin America and the Caribbean, which garnered 17. East Asia and the Pacific, MENA, and Europe and Central Asia all maintained smaller percentages, drawing seven gifts or fewer. Fifteen organizations chose the term “Global” to describe their work, describing broader areas of service.
Of the 25 gifts made in South Asia, 15 landed in India, a consistent geographic area of concentration. Of those, several centered upon self-empowerment and capacity-building, like a $7 million gift to the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme, and a $3 million gift to Samerth charitable trust, both to empower local community-based groups to manage all aspects of their lives.
Eight recipients in India listed work building livelihoods and workforce development, with an emphasis on lifting women. For example, a $6 million gift to the Akhand Jyoti Eye Hospital helps lift the barrier of curable forms of blindness for women in the workforce, and $6 million to SEWA Bharat helps women working in the informal economy move into the mainstream.
Top areas of interest
As a matter of broad strategies, available data also shows the sustained focus on the categories of health, equity and justice, education, and economic security — which aligns with several of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.
The Health category — which broadly includes subcategories like access to healthcare; nutrition and food security; fighting back against infectious and parasitic disease; and water access, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) — landed 36 gifts in 2023, or roughly half of those made that year. A total of 162 gifts were keyed to that category across all years.
Equity and justice spans topics such as immigration and migration, gender identity, race and ethnicity, and incarceration. The category was named in gifts to 35 organizations in 2023, and 160 across all years.
Education, meanwhile, landed 31 gifts last year, focused on elementary and secondary education and youth development, out of a total of 117 gifts in that category across all years.
The total number of gifts in economic security and opportunity was at a similar level, with 21 gifts made in 2023, and a total of 108 gifts across all years. Within that, the giving emphasis centered upon a single sub-category: livelihoods and workforce development.
Other focus areas that emerged since giving began included a bundle of human rights, bridging divides, and humanitarian relief, which total 112 gifts so far; the environment, at 96 gifts; funds and regrantors at 92; democratic process at 76; and gifts to boost the nonprofit sector, at 71. The area that’s drawn the lowest level of organizational focus to date is arts and culture, at 25. By and large, organizations that received funding in the category reported a focus on creative youth development (8) or cultural awareness (7).
Following the money
The total amount of 2023 giving reported by recipients came in at $241 million, with an average gift size of roughly $5.5 million.
The single largest gift in 2023 was $20 million made to CAMFED, a pan-African movement to transform how education is delivered to girls that emphasizes community and peer involvement. It builds on a $25 million gift received in 2020 to help young women in rural communities across Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia achieve independence.
The next two largest gifts reported were $15 million to the Fistula Foundation, which helps combat an obstetric condition of childbirth that results in dire physical and cultural outcomes, and the same sum to Global Fishing Watch, which monitors human activity to advance environmental justice in the world’s oceans.
Four organizations received a $10 million vote of confidence in 2023 across several focus areas. In healthcare, the Malaria Consortium works to save lives and improve health outcomes in Africa and Asia by focusing on targeted diseases like malaria, dengue and pneumonia. In climate, Canopy Planet partners with companies to protect the world’s forest ecosystems by transforming supply chains and empowering front-line communities.
In developing equity, $10 million was also awarded to the Equality Fund, a feminist movement-builder managed and inspired by women. And AmplifyChange will use its $10 million gift to address sexual and gender-based violence and reproductive justice in MENA, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
Nine million more was also received by MAMTA Health Institute for Mother and Child, to improve healthcare systems and public health initiatives in India, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa — again showing the interconnectedness of global work.
In a year when Scott’s giving update came wrapped in only two sentences, the data told a story of a steady hand backing the “inspiring ways” the world’s disenfranchised are working together to create a better future.
