The New Mexico Trails Girl Scouts headquarters in Albuquerque, NM, is shown June 7, 2021. Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has donated $84.5 million to Girl Scouts of America and 29 branches. local branch of this organization.
Susan Montoya Bryan / AP
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Susan Montoya Bryan / AP
The New Mexico Trails Girl Scouts headquarters in Albuquerque, NM, is shown June 7, 2021. Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has donated $84.5 million to Girl Scouts of America and 29 branches. local branch of this organization.
Susan Montoya Bryan / AP
NEW YORK – Charity house MacKenzie Scott The 110-year-old organization said Tuesday it has donated $84.5 million to the Girl Scouts of America and its 29 local branches.
Sofia Chang, CEO of GSUSA, said in an interview: “Her support for our organization is just as honest as the donation.
That’s the biggest donation Girl Scouts had received from an individual since their founding in 1912, she said. These funds will help the organization recover from the impact of the pandemic, which has reduced membership. Girl Scouts plans to support volunteers and staff, make camp assets more resilient to the effects of climate change, improve science and technology education for youth members and develop a diversity and inclusion program to make their troops more accessible.
The Council of Girl Scouts of Southern Arizona has decided to use the $1.4 million it received from Scott to enhance the work they are doing rather than starting a new program or initiative, director executive Kristen Garcia-Hernandez said.
“We’re a small council and we’re certainly not in a big urban center. So for us, gifts of this magnitude don’t come around very often,” said Garcia-Hernandez.
The gift accelerates their plans to hire more staff to reach most locations in the seven counties they serve in less than an hour and offer year-round programming. The council will also equip a van as a mobile science and technology classroom, a project it has been trying to fund for a year and a half. Many local donors seem to think Girl Scouts’ cookie sales cover their costs, she said.
Garcia-Hernandez said: “While the cookie program keeps us going and it’s amazing and the girls are part of that process, which makes it even more beautiful, but We definitely need more from the community,” Garcia-Hernandez said.
Philanthropy to organizations specifically serving women and girls makes up less than 2% of all donations, according to a research project by the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at Lilly Family School of Charity. Indiana University. The institute found that rates did not change significantly between 2012 and 2019, the years the study tracked.
Tessa Skidmore, a research associate at the institute, says large gifts from women such as philanthropists Melinda French Gates, Sheryl Sandberg and Scott can inspire other donors.
“Those are the types that have the potential to change that number,” she said.
The institute works with Pivotal Ventures, an investment firm founded by the French Gates, and others to promote gift giving to women and girls on International Day of the Girl Child, marked May 11th. 10 annually. It also shares its donation data in the hope that donors or researchers will use it as a way to gauge gender equality in donation activities.
Scott doesn’t often talk about she gives. . Scott also made a blockbuster $275 million gift to Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its affiliates this year.
In September, Scott filed for divorce from her second husband, Dan Jewett, whose profile was also removed from the website of The Giving Pledge, a group that asks billionaires to give away more than half of their wealth. property in their lifetime. Last year, the couple wrote together on the website about Scott’s intentions to give away his fortune, largely stemming from her divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Girl Scouts’ youth membership has dropped dramatically during the pandemic, dropping by nearly 30% from about 1.4 million in 2019-2020 to just over 1 million in 2021-2022. Chang acknowledges this drop but insists that the organization’s programs have always helped girls build confidence and solve problems in their communities.
“Our traditional way of supporting girls was really inappropriate during the pandemic because the military couldn’t meet face-to-face,” Chang said. “So to build back stronger than we’ve ever been before, we really listen to our Girl Scouts, listen to their families and our volunteers to make reassurance that what happens next for us really has an impact in the moment.”
