While none of the particulars of MacKenzie Scott’s giving approach are new, she has combined them at a scale and in a way that is unprecedented, and that has captured the attention of nonprofits and donors alike, a study from the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) finds.

The first report in a three-year effort CEP started nine months ago, Giving Big: The Impact of Large, Unrestricted Gifts on Nonprofits (46 pages, PDF) found that the median gift in 2020, Scott’s first year of giving, was $8 million, according to responses to a survey CEP conducted earlier this year. By comparison, the median grant awarded by large foundations in CEP’s Grantee Perception Report (GPR) dataset is $100,000. To most of the nonprofits that received grants from Scott, the experience has been different from traditional donor relationships. “The amount of money didn’t even feel real,” one leader of a recipient organization told CEP researchers. “What felt more real was the pride and validation that the work I was doing mattered, and somebody had noticed.”

Written by CEP president Phil Buchanan and research director Ellie Buteau, the study examined whether Scott’s gifts caused organizations to crumble or become unable to effectively allocate funds, and whether the gifts led other donors to pull back on their funding. For organizations that received massive gifts from Scott between summer 2020 and summer 2021, the effects have been dramatically and profoundly positive, at least so far and at least in the eyes of their leaders. The large gifts have enabled organizations to fulfill basic unmet needs—from expanding programs to strengthening financial sustainability to improving operations. Moreover, organizations have been able to quickly determine uses for these funds, and there have been few, if any, unintended negative consequences to date. On the contrary, the leaders surveyed and interviewed reported a new sense of empowerment and agency that they believe has positively affected their organizations, their fundraising ability, and their own personal leadership.

The report’s authors caution, however, that it is still too soon to draw conclusions. “Like all research, our study is limited by the moment in which it was conducted and by its scope,” they write. “We don’t explore in-depth, for example, the effects of Scott’s giving on fields or movements. We don’t explore concerns about the vetting process, and the lack of transparency about that process, that some have critiqued. And, just because we don’t see unintended negative consequences for recipient organizations now doesn’t mean they won’t appear later on or with later years of recipients.”

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