Campaign seeks to secure $30 Million Racial Justice in Education Endowment

For Immediate Release
March 24, 2022

Contact: Melissa Daar Carvajal
mdc@schottfoundation.org
415-623-6235

In late 2021, the Schott Foundation received a significant investment from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. This investment helps Schott launch the Racial Justice in Education Endowment – the first fund of its kind to raise capital for endowments to ensure the sustainability of several BIPOC-led national education justice alliances. Other partners including the Nellie Mae Education Foundation and the Schott Fund also seeded funding towards the $30 million endowment goal.

The MacKenzie Scott gift also allows Schott to increase grantmaking to state and local grassroots organizing partners over the next three years. Along with funding from other long-time philanthropic partners like the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Josephine and Louise Crane Foundation, and Chrysalis Fund, Schott will continue to meet grassroots partners at their points of highest need with technical supports and flexible and consistent funding to tackle the challenges confronting their communities. Moreover, Schott will leverage the investment to strengthen its infrastructure to continue to serve as a bridge and leader in raising and distributing capital to grassroots organizations.

“This investment is deeply impactful for the education justice movement. Schott takes seriously its role connecting philanthropy and grassroots organizations on the frontlines of racial justice and public education,” said John H. Jackson, President and CEO, Schott Foundation for Public Education. “The education justice movement needs philanthropy to be bold and we are grateful to MacKenzie Scott for the tremendous support.”

Schott’s Opportunity to Learn Network

As the Schott Foundation details in our #JusticeIsTheFoundation data project, only 0.8% of all K-12 philanthropic dollars are invested in racial justice in education.

Over the past 30 years, the Schott Foundation cultivated an Opportunity to Learn Network comprised of grassroots education justice grantee partners spanning over 32 states, 100 communities and 120,000 youth and parent advocates. In recent years, Network community organizing groups have turned years of base-building, leadership development, freedom dreaming, and direct action into transformative policy change in their schools. With philanthropic support, organizing in communities of color is supported to build the power necessary to effectively counter today’s attacks, advance racial justice and a multi-racial democracy.

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