Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott donates $45 million to LGBTQ+ youth hotline organization, The Trevor Project

This gift is the largest in the organization’s history but also a huge blessing after years of administrative turmoil, layoffs and the loss of significant federal funding over the summer.

“I literally couldn’t believe it and it took me a while. I literally gasped,” said James Black, CEO of The Trevor Project, when they were notified of Scott’s gift.

Scott, whose fortune comes largely from her ex-husband, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has given more than $7 billion to nonprofits in 2025, but that gift to The Trevor Project was not included among the donations she disclosed on her website in December. Scott previously gave The Trevor Project $6 million in 2020.

In July, the Trump administration stopped providing specific support to LGBT youth who called the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline 988. The Trevor Project was one of the organizations employing that option and lost $25 million in funding, the nonprofit said.

The Trevor Project continues to operate an independent hotline for LGBTQ+ youth that Black said reaches about 250,000 youth annually, but they have served another 250,000 callers through the 988 Press 3 option, which is designed specifically for LGBTQ+ youth.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that more than 1.5 million contacts were routed through the service between September 2022 and July 2025.

The Trevor Project has gone through years of internal turmoil after it ballooned in size from an organization with an annual budget of about $4 million in 2016 to more than $83 million in 2023, according to its public tax filings. The nonprofit’s board of directors fired its CEO in 2022, and it underwent a series of layoffs, including in July. Black said the project’s 2026 budget was $47 million.

“We’re a smaller organization than we used to be,” Black said. “And we will continue to be intentional and really interested in growth and what growth really means for the organization.”

After losing 988 funding, The Trevor Project launched an emergency fundraising campaign that has brought in $20 million so far, Black said, and they also hope Scott will see it as proof that the organization is determined to survive and survive through this period.

“The MacKenzie Scott team was clear that this gift was being made for long-term impact,” Black said, adding that they would take their time in deciding how to use the funds.

It’s not at all uncommon for nonprofits to grow too quickly and run into financial problems, said Thad Calabrese, a professor at New York University who researches the financial management of nonprofits. But he also said cuts and general instability in federal funding in particular for nonprofits have upended many organizations’ business models.

“Academic research has often viewed public funding as very stable, as a signal to donors that you have arrived as an organisation, but the reality is that you are now also open to changing political fortunes,” he said.

He said the research is also unclear whether diversifying an organization’s revenue sources is always a better financial strategy.

“You are less dependent on a few funders, but on the other hand, if you have a lot of different revenue streams, do you have the management capacity for that?” Calabrese asked, speaking generally and not commenting specifically on Trevor’s project.

Scott has distinguished herself among major individual donors by making significant, unrestricted gifts to nonprofit organizations, often with an emphasis on equity or social justice. Except for an open call in 2023, it does not solicit project proposals or accept applications.

Despite the size of their gifts, which now often exceed the recipient organization’s annual budget, research by the Center for Effective Philanthropy has found that concerns about nonprofits misusing Scott funds or growing unsustainably have largely gone unfulfilled. This may be because Scott’s team, whose members are largely unknown, conducts extensive research on organizations before making grants.

In an article announcing her 2025 gifts, Scott said: “The importance of peaceful, non-reciprocal contribution has long been underestimated, often on the grounds that it is not financially self-sustaining, or that some of its benefits are difficult to track. But what if these imagined liabilities are actually assets? … What if the fact that some of our organizations are at risk can itself be a powerful driver of our generosity?”

Black called Scott’s second gift a “powerful validation” of The Trevor Project’s mission and impact, saying, “We call this our transformation story.”

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