Dr. Walter M. Kimbrough was driving when he received the good news: Dillard University, the private historically Black university (HBCU) where he serves as president, was receiving its largest donation ever. He didn’t believe it.
“I said, ‘Wait, let me pull over and confirm,’” Kimbrough said. “We were surprised, just like everybody else.”
Everybody else includes the 384 organizations who received almost $6 billion in donations from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott in the summer and fall of 2020. Scott, who gave a third round of gifts just last month to more HBCUs, community colleges, and Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs), signed “The Giving Pledge” in 2019, where the wealthiest persons in the world agreed to donate most of their wealth to those in need.
These donations, although not enough to counter the “problems of 100-year-old institutions that have never been funded on a level commensurate with their impact and their need,” are still a great start, said Dr. Charlie Nelms, the chancellor emeritus of North Carolina Central University and an HBCU graduate and advocate. He said, more people than ever are giving to HBCUs and MSIs in the “post George Floyd era.” But one of the more remarkable aspects of Scott’s donations is that they came with no strings attached, which “means that the institutions themselves could see where the dollars would best be served.”
Nelms recently penned an op-ed for Diverse about Scott’s philanthropic gifts and offered a blueprint on HBCUs can build on their philanthropic efforts.
With the freedom of no-strings attached, HBCUs are planning to use these funds in a variety of ways including helping their students financially, doubling their institutional endowments, and investing in faculty development. With a new school year slated to begin next month, many of these institutions have already started to put the funds to use.
Dillard University’s leadership team decided the best way to use their $5 million gift would be in outreach, marketing, and enrollment management.
