MacKenzie Scott’s $50M Gift to Cal State East Bay Shakes Up Higher Ed

Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has accelerated her record-setting giving streak, announcing two more transformative gifts that push her lifetime charitable contributions beyond $19 billion. Northern Oklahoma College (NOC) confirmed it has received a landmark $17 million from Scott, the largest single donation in the rural school’s 124-year history. Administrators say the unrestricted funds will expand need-based scholarships for the approximately 80 percent of NOC students who rely on financial aid and help launch new vocational programs aimed at Oklahoma’s workforce shortages. Hours later, California State University East Bay revealed a separate $50 million gift—another all-time record for the Hayward campus, which has wrestled with steep post-pandemic enrollment declines. University president Cathy Sandeen called the infusion “an extraordinary act of trust” that will fortify student-success initiatives and help offset state funding gaps. The back-to-back announcements cap a flurry of seven- and eight-figure checks Scott has written this fall to under-resourced colleges nationwide, including CUNY’s Lehman College in the Bronx ($50 million) and Bay Mills Community College in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula ($9 million). Analysts tracking her nonprofit database, Yield Giving, estimate her higher-education gifts now exceed $860 million in 2025 alone. Scott, whose fortune stems from her 2019 divorce settlement with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, distributes donations with no strings attached—a rarity in big-ticket philanthropy. Campus leaders say the lack of restrictions accelerates impact, allowing them to steer dollars toward immediate priorities such as debt-free graduation pathways, food-security centers and mental-health counseling. Philanthropy experts note that Scott’s median grant sits near $5 million, but she routinely scales up when a school serves large populations of first-generation, Black, Latino or Indigenous students. “She’s rewriting the playbook,” says Stacy Palmer of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. “By trusting local leadership, these dollars reach students faster and signal to other donors that smaller institutions are worth investing in.” Scott has publicly committed to giving away the bulk of her roughly $39 billion net worth and is not slowing down. Yield Giving quietly invites nonprofits to apply for unrestricted awards through an open-call process, and insiders expect another wave of grants before year-end. For community colleges like NOC and regional universities like Cal State East Bay, that could mean more historic checks—and more opportunities for students who have traditionally been overlooked.