Fresno Unified Got $20 Million From MacKenzie Scott — No Strings Attached

Fresno Unified School District landed $20 million from billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott in 2022. The money came with no restrictions — the district’s elected school board decides how to spend it.

It’s the largest single gift Scott, ex-wife of Jeff-Bezos, gave to any California K-12 district in a giving spree that put more than $461 million into the state’s public schools and colleges between 2021 and 2025. Nationally, Scott handed out $26 billion starting in 2019.

Scott’s organization picks recipients through what her website calls “quiet research” targeting groups working with underserved communities. Fresno Unified was the only California K-12 district she funded. Then-Superintendent Bob Nelson said at the time he didn’t know why his district was singled out.

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The Breakdown

• Scott’s team identifies recipients through private research focused on organizations serving underserved populations.
• The grants are unrestricted — no strings, no required spending plan. Recipients decide how to use the money.
• Among California public education institutions, Cal State Northridge and UC Merced each received two grants totaling $151 million. Cal State East Bay got $50 million. Lemoore College, south of Fresno, received an undisclosed amount in 2021.
• Higher education institutions captured roughly 90% of Scott’s California public-education giving. Fresno Unified’s $20 million was the only K-12 grant reported.

What This Means for You

Fresno Unified’s elected school board controls how this $20 million gets spent — no donor veto, no mandated program. The unrestricted structure means the board faces no outside requirements about how to allocate the funds.

According to Fresno Unified in 2022, the grant money was deposited into “the coffers of a brand new foundation,” meant to fund FUSD graduates with scholarships.

At the State of Education Gala in 2022, that was upgraded from a modest luncheon to a fancy upscale dinner event held at Chaffee Zoo, then Fresno Unified Superintendent Bob Nelson indicated no specific plans. However, he did entertain some scenarios: “We’ve never given away more than $165,000 in scholarships. The interest alone — even in a failing economy at 4% interest — $20 million earns $800,000 a year. So, quite honestly, you could go six times the (previous) level of scholarships, and we could do that until every single one of us is dead.”

Meanwhile, the sold out “re-imagined” gala, with its violin performances, cocktails and hors d’oeuvres attracted 49 donors, including 32 new donors, and reportedly netted five times any amount ever raised from a single event. Officials say the revenue from the gala was also designated to scholarships for future grads.

What to Watch

Unrestricted grants are rare because they’re a test — no one’s mandating the right answer, so the choice the board made is the tell. A gift this size should have left a visible mark. If the district’s own budget documents or public reports don’t show what the $20 million funded, that silence is the story.

The Fresno Unified Scholarship Fund Annual Report from 2024 and 2025 show conflicting and unclear figures on the amount of scholarships awarded, with figures ranging from $440,000 to $1.5 million, which may be a cumulative figure over several years. Both reports consistently show over $21 million in assets. Yet, a total of $21,000 was raised from 178 individual employee contributions deducted from their payroll.

Meanwhile, the district has seen a steady decline of 1000 to 1500 students per year since the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Is it fair for a dwindling district to ask its employees to contribute to a fund that already contains over $20 million in assets?

Where did the money actually go? how many scholarships were actually awarded? Did the figures increase from 2021, to 2022, to 2023? Those annual reports are not available online.

When a district has been given a no strings attached to grant of this magnitude, what obligation do they have to the community (and grant-giver) to be transparent and forthcoming with the uses of the funds? Does it serve the community to use the grant to earn interest that supports an annual operations of a scholarship fund that has a little transparency? What type of stewardship would you like to see? These are questions to ask when preparing to make your decisions at the ballot.