How MacKenzie Scott’s Gifts Illustrate the Value of No-Strings Giving

This month Meals on Wheels America announced that it had received $70 million from MacKenzie Scott — a windfall that will provide a major boost to the group’s efforts to address hunger and isolation among the elderly. The funds will enable it to increase support for some of the 5,000 affiliates and other organizations it works with in communities across the country.  

Scott’s single gift is more than three times the group’s total revenues in 2024. That the gift is unrestricted — meaning the nonprofit can use the money as it wishes — is just as much a boon as the dollars themselves, said Kristine Templin, the organization’s chief development officer.

“We are operating in a rapidly changing environment where funding is unpredictable, and this gift creates a safety net and gives us the ability to test and pilot new innovations that we couldn’t have before,” Templin said. “When you have restricted funds, it makes it hard to move and pivot quickly, so this really does give us the ability to move in much more flexible, nimble, and creative ways.”

Scott has given more than $26.3 billion to over 2,700 nonprofits since 2020 and nearly all those donations have been unrestricted. That is something the nonprofit world needs much more of, said Rebecca Reeve-Bennett, senior program officer at Panorama Global, which has been tracking Scott’s giving since 2020.

“What’s key about unrestricted funding is it cedes the power for how to respond to challenges and needs to the organizations themselves and gives them the freedom to decide how they want to respond in real time to the challenges in their communities,” said Reeve-Bennett.

Help Weathering Government Cuts

A recent report from Panorama, authored by Reeve-Bennett, highlights how Scott’s unrestricted giving helped seven nonprofits working in the Global South maintain stability and carry out their missions at a time of rampant U.S. government cuts in funding. 

One of them, the Fistula Foundation, a charity that makes grants for surgeries and recovery care for women with obstetric fistula, a severe and dangerous birthing injury, received a $15 million gift from Scott in 2023. The money went to expanding access to fistula surgeries for women across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where the problem appears more frequently than in other parts of the world.  

With Scott’s unrestricted gift, the foundation was able to increase surgeries from 10,702 in 2022 to 16,587 in 2024, expand its geographic reach by 37 percent, and grow its global network of local partners by nearly 50 percent.

Another nonprofit, Village Enterprise, which helps people living in extreme poverty in rural parts of Africa, received $7 million from Scott in 2023. Its leaders used some of the money to shore up the group’s internal operations and staff and  directed another portion to boost its financial reserves. Thanks to those decisions, the group was in solid financial shape when the Trump administration dismantled the United States Agency for International Development last year. Village Enterprise lost 30 percent of its government funding, but it has still been able to continue its work. 

A Plan to Address Immediate Needs

With gas prices spiking and groceries remaining expensive for most consumers, the Meals on Wheels partners have seen demand jump. One in three Meals on Wheels providers has a waitlist for home-delivered meal services. 

The majority of Meals on Wheels America’s funding comes from individual donors, foundations, and corporations. Its affiliates receive government grants, but most of that funding comes with restrictions on how the money can be used. That can make it hard to respond quickly to sharp spikes in need or even plan long term. 

The group is thinking through how to use the $70 million, but  some will go to local providers so they can address immediate needs for things like a new stove, a larger freezer, or new delivery vehicles, all things for which government funding cannot be used.

“We’re also building a plan for how to use much of it in a way that will strengthen the network going forward, whether we are giving money directly or investing in shared services and infrastructure,” Templin said.

Greater Flexibility

Scott’s no-strings-attached funding has also benefited the Corporation for Supportive Housing, a national nonprofit that invests in affordable housing developments that provide services to people in need. The group received $40 million from Scott in 2024.  

It used half to build more supportive housing units and is spending the other half over five years for programs and staff development.

Among the programs it has backed so far is a partnership with Fountain House, a mental health charity in New York, to combat isolation in housing for people with serious mental illness, and  career and workplace coaching to all staff. It is also rolling out a new research hub  that will share research findings with others in the supportive housing field.

All of these projects were on the nonprofit’s wish list, but it would have taken a year or more to raise the money from funders who would most likely have placed restrictions on how the money could be used, said Deborah De Santis, the group’s CEO.

“This money gives you the flexibility to direct the funds where the greatest needs are,” said De Santis. “Her funds give you the opportunity to say, ‘This is the best use of the funds in this moment, in this month, in this year. This where we need to be directing these funds.’”

Correction: A previous version of this article said that half of Meals on Wheels affiliates have a four-month-long wait list. It’s been corrected to say that one in three providers has a waitlist for home-delivered meals. That version also said that the national Meals on Wheels office gets government grants, but only the affiliates do.