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Break out your finest Thin Mints! Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has donated $85 million to Girl Scouts of the USA and 29 of its branches, the largest individual donation in that organization’s history.
The surprise donation will be used to help it recover from the pandemic, which took a strong toll on membership. Girl Scout officials say they plan to support volunteers and staff and future-proof camp properties in a variety of ways, including expanding accessibility and making improvements to resist climate change.
“We are so appreciative of MacKenzie Scott’s gift to Girl Scouts,” said Girl Scouts of the USA CEO Sofia Chang in a statement. “This is a great accelerator for our ongoing efforts to help girls cultivate the skills and connections needed to lead in their own communities and globally.”
The Girl Scouts say they also plan to use the funds to increase diversity among members and to innovate its programs, including expanding STEM fields, such as coding, aeronautics, and sustainability.
The Girl Scouts council of Southern Arizona decided to use the $1.4 million it received from Scott to elevate the work it is already pursuing rather than start a new program or initiative, said its CEO, Kristen García-Hernandez.
“We are a small council, and we’re certainly not in a major metropolitan hub. So for us, gifts of this magnitude don’t come around very often,” García-Hernandez said.
Philanthropic giving to organizations that specifically serve women and girls represents less than 2% of all donations, according to a research project from the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. The institute found that proportion has not changed significantly between 2012 and 2019, the years the study has tracked.
Tessa Skidmore, research associate at the institute, said major gifts from women like philanthropists Melinda French Gates, Sheryl Sandberg, and Scott could inspire other donors.
“Those are the types of things that have the potential to change that number,” she said.
Scott is the world’s 41st richest person with a net worth of $27.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. And she has made it her mission to give that fortune away.
In March, she announced via a Medium post that she has donated more than $3.8 billion to 465 nonprofits since last June.
Scott is one of several multibillionaires who has signed the Giving Pledge, with a commitment to give away half their fortune to charity. To date, she has given away more than $12 billion in four rounds of funding.
Scott is also in the process of divorcing her second husband, science teacher Dan Jewett, after 18 months. Prior to that, she was married to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
