How Many Green Groups Won Support in MacKenzie Scott’s First Open Call?
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Chugach Mountains in Alaska. xavitorrents/shutterstock
In her 13 years leading the Alaska-based environmental justice nonprofit Native Movement, Enei Begaye has often partnered with conservation groups, despite concerns that the work did little to shift the status quo.
For years, such projects were “largely led by white, older men,” she said. “The strategies of a lot of that type of thinking in… white-led conservation work is steeped in colonialism, whether or not it is recognized.”
Mainstream environmental philanthropy has overwhelmingly tended to reward that sort of work, leaving mostly scraps for groups like hers. But Begaye says that philanthropy is finally seeing women of color leaders like herself — and cutting them checks. Over the past five years, her group’s budget has grown roughly sevenfold, thanks to its first-ever million-dollar donations.
“It has really afforded us the ability to vision and carry out strategies that are not the same old thing that has kept us where we are,” said Begaye, who is Diné and Tohono O'odham.
The latest vote of confidence: A $2 million gift from MacKenzie Scott, announced last week as part of $640 million granted by the billionaire through an open call run by philanthropic prize platform Lever for Change. It’s an award that exemplifies many of the themes of the megadonor’s green giving.
Native Movement was one of 40 groups out of the 361 recipients who self-reported environmental justice as a priority, together accounting for $70 million and making that focus area by far the most common environmental issue cited by awardees. By my count, groups that named one or more environmental topics as priorities received at least 12% of Scott’s latest slate of awards.
It is a challenge, however, putting a hard number on how many green groups received awards, which underlines the more expansive approach taken by Scott’s team at Yield Giving. To start, each awardee could select up to five focus areas from a defined list of dozens. For instance, under the environment label the other defined priorities were climate change (chosen by 10 groups), natural resources conservation (two) and biodiversity (none). In all, 43 groups chose one or more of the environmental terms as focus areas.
But there were complimentary priorities listed under other categories in Yield’s list, such as focus areas related to agriculture, water and food security. If you add groups who chose one or more of those three, that brings the total to 69. Where to stop? The difficulty feels appropriate. Many of these awardees do work that defies narrow categorization — a reality that leaders of such groups have at times cited as a barrier to winning support from more traditional and siloed grantmakers.
Put another way, nearly all Scott’s green recipients are local organizations that work across traditional philanthropic silos, and address environmental issues as one of several concerns. That fits with Scott’s past rounds of awards and the focus on community in the call for applications. Like Native Movement, most are also led by members of the groups they serve, and focused on historically marginalized communities.
Several recipients highlighted their work with low-income residents of their regions, such as the César Chávez and Dolores Huerta-founded La Unión del Pueblo Entero and the grassroots neighborhood group Good Old Lower East Side, while groups like Dallas-based Bonton Farms and the sailing group Rocking the Boat emphasized their work against systemic inequity.
There were environment-oriented recipients focused on everything from food, like the Bay Area-based Planting Justice or La Semilla Food Center in the Paso del Norte region, to development, such as the Pittsburgh-based Hazelwood Initiative and or the Esperanza Community Housing Corporation in Los Angeles. But again, these and other recipients generally take an intersectional approach.
As noted above, there were also several awardees that did not select any of the environment focus areas, yet whose work clearly overlaps. Examples include the agricultural human rights group Fair Food Standards Council and the Chicago-based Farmworker and Landscaper Advocacy Project, or any number of housing-focused recipients working to remake the built environment, such as by advocating for housing density or improved public transportation.
The American West was an outsized beneficiary of Scott’s green awards this round, with roughly half of the 43 environment recipients located in the region. Native Movement was one of just a few awardees in Alaska, but there were 11 environmentally focused recipients in California, or about a quarter of the total green grantees.
One of those was the California Environmental Voters Education Fund. Like so many Scott grantees I’ve spoken with, Mary Creasman, the group’s CEO, said the lack of limits on how to spend the award will be “transformative.”
Creasman said every year she has to do budgetary “Tetris” to make sure grants cover all aspects of the group’s operations. With an unrestricted $1 million from Scott in the bank, her team can get their work underway this year without “feeling like we’re doing it with one arm behind our back because we can’t spend these dollars,” she said.
The money will also help her nonprofit weather any unexpected disruptions, like last year, when the failure of Silicon Valley Bank led many of her group’s funders to put their donations on hold because they could not withdraw their funds.
“It's so important for organizations like ours that are smaller to have a reserve, because we really ride the wave of whatever is going on in the economy in a way bigger organizations don't,” she said.
One departure this round from Scott’s standard operating procedure: Recipients were involved in an extensive application and vetting process. All three green grantees I spoke with emphasized the rigor, plus the staff time involved in vetting peers. Begaye likened it to applying for public dollars. But she and others said that was balanced by the modest followup requirements. “You kind of earn all that staff time back with what you don't have to do on the reporting side afterwards,” said Creasman.
C.J. Sentell, CEO of the Nashville Food Project, which provides thousands of weekly meals by recovering food from local grocers and restaurants, running community gardens and through partnerships with dozens of other groups, called the process a “good challenge.”
His organization’s $1 million award is the single-largest noncapital gift it has ever received. Like his fellow recipients, he emphasized that the recognition, not to mention the thorough vetting, gives his organization a powerful stamp of credibility — not to mention that the peer-vetting round was a validation that other organizations judged it worthy of support.
“This was a really important confirmation for us and affirmation that what we’re doing is… worthy of recognition on a national level,” he said.
