MacKenzie Scott donates nearly $85M to Girl Scouts
Scott's gift marked the biggest donation to the Girl Scouts from an individual
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Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott gifted nearly $85 million to the Girl Scouts of the USA and some of its local branches in an effort to help advance the 110-year-old organization's mission.
It marked the largest donation from an individual since its founding in 1912.
The Girl Scouts announced Wednesday that the gift will accelerate "initiatives that give girls the tools to become the next generation of powerful women leaders."
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Girl Scouts of the USA CEO Sofia Chang said the support from donors such as Scott "is critical in delivering on our work of reimagination and transformation."
The Girl Scouts plan to use the funds to support volunteers and staff, make camp properties more resistant to the impacts of climate change, improve science and technology education for youth members and develop diversity and inclusion programming to make their troops more accessible.
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The gift also accelerates the organization's plan to hire more staff to reach most places in the seven counties it serves in under an hour and provide programming year-round. The council will also outfit a van as a mobile science and technology classroom, a project it has tried to fund for a year and a half.
In total, the Girl Scouts have 111 councils across the nation.
MacKenzie-Scott arrives at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills, California in March 2018. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP / AP Images)
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The donation comes just months after Scott, whose fortune largely comes from her split from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2019, donated $122.6 million to Big Brothers Big Sisters of America to help transform mentorship in communities across the country.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.