A ‘game changer.’ One of the world’s richest people donates millions to Ky. college
A Kentucky community college received a $15 million gift from one of the world’s richest people, the college’s president announced Tuesday.
MacKenzie Scott, a billionaire, novelist and philanthropist who was married to Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, donated the sum to West Kentucky Community College in Paducah.
The gift is the largest in WKCTC history, said Anton Reece, the college’s president. When he first learned of the gift late last month he initially “thought it was a hoax” and found the news hard to believe even after two or three communications with Scott’s team.
Reece said the college isn’t yet set on what to use the money on, but said it will surely be used in a series of actions to bridge issues with educational equity. A portion of the money will be set toward launching the “WKCTC guarantee,” which will be a series of “high-profile” partnerships with K-12 schools, Murray State University and numerous non-profits, Reece said.
“We are up for the challenge,” Reece said. “I want this gift to be a generational game changer.”
Reece said he hopes the gift can go toward the college’s goals of developing adults for the workforce, upgrade skills and help those who may have lost jobs or been displaced during the pandemic.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Scott is the 18th richest person in the world and has a net worth of just over $60 billion. Bloomberg reported Tuesday that Scott is donating a portion of her fortune at a record pace, pledging to give $4 billion to causes across the country in four months after donating over $1 billion over the summer.
In post she wrote on her Medium blog, Scott wrote that she is working on philanthropy work that could go toward reversing some of the social and economic damage brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I asked a team of advisors to help me accelerate my 2020 giving through immediate support to people suffering the economic effects of the crisis,” Scott wrote. “They took a data-driven approach to identifying organizations with strong leadership teams and results, with special attention to those operating in communities facing high projected food insecurity, high measures of racial inequity, high local poverty rates, and low access to philanthropic capital.”
Scott and her team selected 384 organizations across the country to receive gifts, her post stated, relying on “hundreds of field experts, funders, and non-profit leaders and volunteers with decades of experience” to give suggestions and conduct research on potential recipients.
Scott made other higher education news on Tuesday when Morgan State University, the largest historically Black university in Maryland, announced it had received its largest donation ever in the form of a $40 million gift from Scott, the Baltimore Sun reported.
According to her Medium post, Scott also donated to two other organizations in the state — Goodwill Industries of Kentucky and Meals on Wheels of Southwest Ohio & Northern Kentucky. Goodwill got $10 million, according to the Associated Press.
Amy Luttrell, Kentucky Goodwill president and CEO, said more people would be helped with building career skills, AP reported.
This story was originally published December 15, 2020 at 5:48 PM.