Want a Slice of MacKenzie Scott’s Billions? Here's How to Get Funding From Her Foundation

You could say MacKenzie Scott is a very generous and giving person. She dedicated 25 years of her life to billionaire Jeff Bezos from 1993 to 2019, and donated millions to educational funding, especially to historically Black colleges and universities. At the end of 2025 alone, she handed out $50 million to Norfolk State University in Virginia, $80 million to Howard University, and $70 million to the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) to help strengthen HBCUs.

But her giving doesn’t end there. She’s also the founder of MacKenzie Scott & Yield Giving, a company she launched in 2022 to make her donations and grant giving more transparent to the public. And what makes it even better is that organizations can actually apply to receive money from MacKenzie’s foundation, but it seems there’s only a very short window when applications can be submitted.

Here’s everything to know if you’re considering applying.

To apply for a chance to receive a grant or donation from billionaire MacKenzie Scott’s foundation, Yield Giving, you’ll need to submit an application when there is an active open call. Those who were awarded funding in 2024 applied during a 2023 open call. MacKenzie’s foundation has partnered with Lever for Change to run these open calls, and the organization also shares information on what the foundation is looking for in applicants.

So if you want to apply for the next round of funding, you’ll want to keep an eye on the Yield Giving and Lever for Change websites, and any social channels they may be connected to, since that’s where open call announcements will likely appear.

If MacKenzie’s foundation follows the same pattern as last time, it may launch open calls for applications in mid-March, which could mean another opportunity for funding in March 2025 or possibly March 2026, since it’s not clear how often the open calls are hosted.

For the last round of funding from Yield Giving, the open call launched on March 21, 2023, with a registration deadline of May 5, 2023. The deadline to submit applications was June 12, 2023, and the awards were announced on March 19, 2024, according to the Lever for Change website. For that round, MacKenzie’s foundation awarded 361 organizations and distributed a total of $640 million.

Lever for Change said that during the 2023 open call, they received 6,353 applications, and Yield Giving originally planned to give out $1 million to 250 awardees. But after a second round of reviewing, the donor team expanded the pool to 361 awardees, with the top-tier 279 receiving $2 million each and the remaining 82 receiving $1 million each.

MacKenzie is handing out money left and right through her foundation, so it begs the question: Just how much is she worth? Because surely, to be handing out millions of dollars a year and still support her lifestyle, she has to have tons in the bank. And well, she does. Bezos’s ex-wife MacKenzie has a net worth of $40.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

While she’s presumably funding much of the donations and grants given out through her foundation, Lever for Change mentions that donors interested in supporting open calls can do so by contacting the organization. So it’s safe to assume there may be other donors contributing to the funding pile being handed out.