Updated at 2:10 p.m.
Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, one of the world’s wealthiest women, has donated $20 million to the Burlington-based Champlain Housing Trust — the largest gift in the nonprofit’s 40-year history.
The massive donation, made through Scott’s Yield Giving fund, will be used to provide housing and strengthen community in northwestern Vermont, the trust said in announcing the news Wednesday morning.
“We are extremely grateful to Ms. Scott for the confidence she and her team have placed in our efforts to address the region’s housing crisis, the work we do in supporting people in need, and the track record of serving our communities over the last 40 years,” Champlain Housing Trust CEO Michael Monte said in a written statement. “Her generosity gives our community the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to move the dial on affordable housing right now.”
Scott is a novelist and former Amazon executive. Since her divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2019, she has become one of the most generous philanthropists in the country, donating billions of dollars each year — often to small nonprofits.
In 2020, she donated $9 million to the Vermont Foodbank, the largest donation in that organization’s history.
In an interview Wednesday, Monte acknowledged the $20 million wouldn’t be an immediate solution to the housing crisis in northwestern Vermont but said the donation would benefit “a wide range of investments,” helping to “stabilize” the organization as it grows and provide resources “that will have a big and lasting community benefit.”
Some of the specific initiatives likely to benefit are the housing trust’s homeownership equity program, which supports BIPOC home ownership; the shared equity program, which helps buyers with down payments and mortgage payments; and the ongoing development of affordable housing projects.
Champlain Housing Trust is a community land trust serving Chittenden, Franklin and Grand Isle counties. According to its website, it has close to 150 employees. The nonprofit owns or manages more than 2,500 apartments and more than 100 shelter beds or motel rooms, it said in Wednesday’s announcement, and stewards 675 shared equity homes to keep them affordable.
The housing trust’s operating budget is about $27 million a year, but it also has a development budget of between $60 million and $80 million, which it uses for real estate deals.
Monte said his organization had received a call in February from an organization called the Bridgespan Group saying it represented donors who give to nonprofits. Not long after, a team from the housing trust joined a video conference with a few people in San Francisco.
“They all seemed to know us. They had done their research. They had done the background check,” Monte said.
After the meeting, according to Monte, the housing trust turned over documentation: audits, budgets, strategic plans and other information. Then they didn’t hear anything for months — until mid-July, when an email from someone representing a still-anonymous donor asked for a meeting.
Monte said it was during the July phone call that he learned the identity of the donor and the amount.
“I literally was pretty stunned by the sort of generosity of the gift,” Monte said. The team told the housing trust that the donation had “no strings attached, as simple as that,” Monte said, but it also added, “don’t come back asking for more. This is a one-time generous gift.”
During his weekly press conference on Wednesday, Gov. Phil Scott said he was “thankful for the injection of resources to help in our housing crisis.” He said it was too early to tell how the donation would change the state funding picture for housing.
Sarah Mearhoff contributed reporting.
