Second MacKenzie Scott Gift to Supercharge GreenLight Fund’s Impact

We are thrilled to share that GreenLight Fund has received an $18M gift from MacKenzie Scott, nearly doubling her $10M gift to GreenLight Fund in 2021! Her repeat support is a testament to the impactful, sector leading, transformative work GreenLight Fund is doing across the country to invest in community-driven change.

This incredibly generous gift will support GreenLight’s national network infrastructure and strategic initiatives, the ongoing local work in our sites and the ability to expand to more cities across the country.

With an increasing number of individual, family, and institutional investors alongside the initial gift from MacKenzie Scott, GreenLight has grown and made significant progress in the past five years on a number of fronts.

SIGNIFICANT GROWTH IN SIZE AND IMPACT
In 2021, GreenLight’s 33 investments that brought proven organizations to communities in 10 cities reached 328,000 children and families that year with measurably changed outcomes. Fast forward to 2025, GreenLight’s now 63 investments that brought proven organizations to communities in now 15 cities reached more than 1.3M children and families with measurably changed outcomes. With this (and other) key support and with our current accelerating momentum, our footprint and depth and breadth of impact will grow even more dramatically over the next 5 years.

Community engagement
Across our sites, we continue to deepen the ways we engage with leaders and residents. By including diverse perspectives and input from those closest to the issues we are trying to address:

• We make better investment decisions that align with the needs of communities,
• Individuals and families have access to the opportunities and resources they seek in order to lead self-determined, abundant and healthy lives, and
• Nonprofits we bring to our cities are sustainable, integrate with the existing ecosystem and deliver measurable impact.

Focus area expansion
As a result of running our process each year in each city that engages deeply with the community, we are positioned well to be responsive to timely, unmet needs. In the aftermath of the pandemic, the challenges children and families faced were further exacerbated. This led GreenLight to seek out solutions to food insecurity, mental health, public safety and housing stability that would be additive to the work already happening and bring much needed change. 

BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE: SUPERCHARING GREENLIGHT’S IMPACT
MacKenzie Scott’s steadfast dedication to addressing longstanding racial and economic inequities of opportunity aligns with GreenLight’s values and mission. This second gift recognizes the tremendous growth in impact we’ve had as well as the unique value of GreenLight Fund’s innovative, community-driven model. As we think about the next five years, MacKenzie Scott’s investment in GreenLight will supercharge our work towards breaking down barriers and opening opportunities across the country.

We are building an innovation infrastructure for inclusive prosperity – fast-tracking impact in and beyond communities and advancing national knowledge on scalable solutions to urban poverty. 

This gift will be instrumental as we make strategic investments in activities and initiatives that grow our national impact and results in communities, and advance our ambitious strategic plan. 

• Expanding GreenLight’s proven model from 15 to 20 cities by 2030. 
• Investing in our existing sites in ways that deepen our impact in communities. 
• Bringing together nonprofit and community leaders with deep expertise from across the country, we will leverage our network to learn and share best practices. This work will lead to new innovative approaches and solutions as we continue our work to address inequities and accelerate impact.
• Investing in building and sustaining a robust pipeline of organizations that are ready to scale and capable of addressing community-identified needs and delivering measurable results.
• Investing in organizational development and capacity building as our network continues to grow rapidly.

Moving forward with strong and diverse support
We are incredibly grateful for the support of champions across the country, including MacKenzie Scott, that believe in our innovative approach to community-driven change and are partnering with us to deliver impact, helping to improve economic mobility across our cities and nationally. This significant gift from MacKenzie Scott is supercharging our efforts to reach our ambitious goals, advance economic and social mobility, advance racial and other equity of opportunity, and alleviate urban poverty.