She is back at it. MacKenzie Scott, who in the past few years has given away more than $17 billion, has provided $65 million to the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) in New York City. It is the largest contribution in LISC’s nearly half-century history.
The LISC gift was not a solo. The Corporation for Supportive Housing in New York City announced Scott had donated $40 million and Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs in Atlanta received $10 million, both during September. Coastal Enterprises in Brunswick, Maine received $25 million, the Nonprofit Finance Fund was awarded $22 million, and Craft3 in Seattle announced it received $15 million.
The $177 million targeted organizations dedicated to housing and financial assistance.
The gifts come a few weeks after a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that showed she sold 61.66 million shares of her Amazon stock. Depending on the various sale dates, financial sources estimated the value to be anywhere from $8 billion to $11.5 billion.
Scott’s Yield Giving earlier this year awarded $640 million to 361 organizations for work with people in places experiencing the greatest need in the United States. The $640 million was nearly 2.56 times the originally announced plan.
The awards, initially announced at $1 million each to 250 organizations, evolved to 279 organizations. The organizations in the top tier of scores received $2 million each and 82 organizations in the next tier received $1 million.
There were 6,353 applications for the Open Call. In the Fall of 2023, organizations top-rated by their peers advanced to a second round of review by an external Evaluation Panel recruited for relevant experience to the cause and underwent a final round of due diligence.
This is Scott’s second grant to LISC, one of the nation’s largest community development organizations. LISC received a $40 million gift from Scott in 2020, which was used to seed programs that narrow gaps in health, wealth and opportunity, particularly for communities of color.
“We are enormously grateful for Ms. Scott’s confidence in LISC and our national network of programs, staff and partners that are driving impact across the country,” Michael Pugh, LISC president and CEO, said via a statement. “This remarkable funding is an investment not just in our capacity to support affordable housing, economic development, health, safety and jobs, but also in the well-being of the thousands of communities where we work every day.”
LISC’s structure, with 37 metro-area program offices and a rural development program supporting work in more than 2,000 counties, offers funders like Scott an opportunity to support both tailored local solutions and large-scale national impact.
“This kind of unrestricted funding allows LISC to test new ideas, scale up promising programs, and leverage other sources of capital to support positive socio-economic impact,” former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Robert E. Rubin, LISC’s chairman, said via a statement. “We are grateful to Ms. Scott for investing in LISC so we can invest in a strong future for urban and rural communities.”
The new grant will help LISC deepen its work to address the affordable housing crisis, according to an announcement from the organization. “It will advance LISC’s plans to connect underserved communities to the emerging green economy. And it will fuel new efforts leveraging artificial intelligence, particularly as the technology relates to jobs and income growth for people who have not had the skills or access to take advantage of growing fields,” according to the statement.
LISC leaders will determine the specifics of how the new funding will be used in the coming weeks. Since its founding in 1979, LISC has invested $32 billion to create more than 506,000 affordable homes and apartments, develop 82.5 million square feet of retail, community, and educational space, and help tens of thousands of people find employment and improve their finances, according to data from the organization.