California · Donald Trump · Fortune Technology
MacKenzie Scott gave California public education $461 million—and let the recipients decide how to spend every dollar
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Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott had her banner giving year in 2025, with an eye-popping total of $7 billion in donations across a variety of organizations.
Key facts
- California State University, Northridge (CSUN), has received the highest cumulative amount from Scott at $103 million, including a $63 million gift in 2025 and a $40 million gift in 2021
- Similarly, Scott made two donations to UC Merced, including a $20 million gift in 2021 and a subsequent $38 million gift in 2025
- Her grants reached community colleges from Pasadena to Porterville and four K-12 school districts, including a $20 million gift to Fresno Unified School District in 2022
- Of CSUN’s 36,000 students, about 70% are first-generation college students and 60% come from historically underrepresented groups
Summary
But one of her main efforts has gone toward higher education, whether to public institutions that lost funding during the Trump administration or to historically Black colleges and universities. One hotspot for her philanthropic donations is California, where she’s contributed a whopping $461 million to public education institutions, according to EdSource. In all, she’s donated to 16 different institutions, with an average gift size of about $28.8 million. And in Scott’s philanthropic fashion, those are unrestricted donations, meaning the universities could use them as they choose without oversight from Scott’s organization, Yield Giving.