Applicants for one of the 250 $1 million grants from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott have a 3.9% shot of getting the grant. Lever For Change, the offshoot of the MacArthur Foundation in Chicago running the open call, reported 6,353 applications from across all 50 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
There will be a winnowing down from the pool and up to 1,000 top-scoring applicants will advance to Evaluation Panel Reviewer phase for one of the 250 grants, where they will be scored by five Evaluation Panel Reviewers, Cecilia A. Conrad, Ph.D., CEO of Lever For Change told The NonProfit Times at the time of the announcement. That brings the odds down to 25%.
Scott has awarded in excess of $15 billion in unrestricted gifts to more than 1,600 nonprofits during the past two years. The grants were a surprise to the organizations, Scott’s team privately hunting for nonprofits and then making the awards.
Lever For Change worked with Scott on the Equality Can’t Wait Challenge of which Scott was a donor sponsor and afterwards Scott became one of Lever For Change’s four major donors, awarding an unrestricted gift of $8 million. “We were honored to get one of her unrestricted gifts. That was an incredibly exciting phone call,” Conrad told The NonProfit Times during an exclusive interview.
Launched in 2019, Lever For Change has operated 11 customized challenges for major donors. Along with Scott, its three other major donors are the MacArthur Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and philanthropist Reid Hoffman who co-founded the LinkedIn platform.
There are four pillars organizations must meet for the Yield Challenge Open Call:
- Equity-Focused:Does the organization explicitly seek to empower those most vulnerable to achieve substantive improvement in their well-being? Specifically, are individuals and families of meager or modest means, and those historically excluded from opportunity at the center of the organization’s mission and work?
- Track Record:Has the organization meaningfully contributed to the ability of individuals and families to achieve substantive improvement in their well-being? Does the organization have a demonstrable track record of success working in this community?
- Community Leadership: Does the organization’s leadership (leader(s) and leadership team) reflect and represent the experiences and perspectives of the community it serves? Are there clear pathways for community members to influence and shape the direction of its work?
- Team Capacity:Does the team have the depth of skills, capacity, and knowledge necessary to ensure the organization’s continued success?
Information provided by finalists and top performers competing in a Lever For Change grant challenge is entered into Lever For Change’s Bold Solutions Network database. Potential donors can use the database to find projects with the confidence those nonprofits and projects have emerged through a rigorous process and undergone some due diligence, Conrad said.
This particular event was also a challenge for staff at Lever For Change. “It has required that we make sure we reach out to other funders who can share the information on their networks,” Conrad said this past May. “We have particularly focused on finding local funders across the country who can spread the word.”
The reason for the challenge concept is to provide an alternative to the traditional philanthropic approach, which usually limits access. “We think of it in terms that the invitation-only model, you have to know someone to get an invitation. You have to be connected somehow to a funder or to someone who knows a funder,” Conrad told The NonProfit Times in May. “Historically that has contributed to some of the inequality and distribution of philanthropic funding we have seen. We have designed these challenges to be open calls.”
