MacKenzie Scott awards more than $100 million, urges communal action | Philanthropy news

MacKenzie Scott has awarded two grants totaling more than $100 million—to the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund and Morgan State University (MSU), a historically Black university.

The Action Fund, a division of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, was awarded $40 million and will support ongoing work preserving African American historic sites nationwide. The gift brings its fundraising total to nearly $200 million. MSU was awarded an unrestricted grant of $63 million to bolster its endowment, improve student success, and advance academic initiatives in Baltimore.

In a recent essay posted on Yield Giving, her philanthropic platform, Scott asserted that although her recent high-dollar grants will make headlines, it is aid and humanitarian contributions in all forms, especially small and unreported, that communities rely on.

“The potential of peaceful, non-transactional contribution has long been underestimated, often on the basis that it is not financially self-sustaining, or that some of its benefits are hard to track. But what if these imagined liabilities are actually assets,” she wrote. “Votes are not the only way to show what we’d like to see more of in our societies. There are many ways to influence how we move through the world, and where we land.”

(Photo credit: Getty Images/AntonioGuillem)