Helene Weir, president and CEO of the YMCA of Metropolitan Detroit, ignored both emails she got saying an unnamed philanthropist wanted to make a gift to the Detroit-based organization.
It wasn't until she got a call from someone at the Bridgespan Group, urging her to get in touch with the representative, that she took the December emails seriously.
"At first, I was skeptical. I thought, 'Who does that?' " Weir said.
"I felt pretty sheepish that I didn't jump on it, but I really did think it was a scam when it started."
A half a year has passed since then, and the shock has warn off for the nonprofits that got the first round of surprise multimillion-dollar gifts from MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos and billionaire philanthropist, who made another round of gifts last week.
Most are looking beyond the need to plug budget holes, with investments planned for deferred maintenance on buildings and investments in new IT systems that will improve client service and help retain staff. Others are sitting on the funds until they can decide the best way to ensure they are "transformational" — a word they all used — for their organizations and the people they serve.
While the nonprofits were asked to check in with Scott and her team annually for three years through short summaries sharing how they are making an impact with the gifts, there was no specific direction of what to do with the funds, Weir said.
"The sense I got was to continue doing the work you were doing to (support) the community."
Like other nonprofits, the YMCA is in COVID pandemic recovery mode, Weir said, operating on a $15 million budget, less than half of what it was before the pandemic, just like its remaining memberships.
Of the $10 million gift, it plans to invest $2.5 million in deferred maintenance and updates like new air conditioning at its locations in the region. Another $1 million will be split between pay increases for staff who haven't seen them in years and increased starting wages for entry level workers to help the YMCA be more competitive, Weir said. It will also put several hundred thousand dollars behind its high school completion and children's' water safety programs, technology upgrades, marketing to lift up the programs it provides beyond gyms (like emergency food assistance and youth arts) and $25,000 in microgrants for small nonprofits through a program launching this fall.
"We wanted to do a 'pay it forward'" for smaller nonprofits, Weir said. "There's a lot of great work happening in the area."
Perhaps at some point, a portion of the gift will be used to replace the $2 million the YMCA drew down from its board-designated endowment to survive during the pandemic, she said. But for now, the remaining two-thirds of the gift, about $6.5 million, will be kept in reserve, with annual assessments of its use.
"We didn't want the Scott money to be consumed by the recovery from the pandemic because we have a huge operating challenge now," Weir said.
While the gift is the largest in the local YMCA's 169-year history, it will run out some day. "You'll look around and say what was the permanent, lasting impact of the gift?" she said.
"Staying open is pretty important, but (the goal is) are we able to find other ways to do that so the gift can be transformational, as was intended?"
Easterseals Michigan is thinking similarly, with plans to make some short-term investments but hold most of the funds, investing them while it waits for the right opportunities to have long-term impact.
"If you would have asked me six months ago if we'd be further along, I would have thought so. But we definitely want to be thoughtful and deliberate about how we're using the gift," President and CEO Brent Wirth said.
The nonprofit has created a board-designated fund and committee that will weigh in on how the funds are used, based on ideas that come up from the staff.
It plans to invest most of its $15 million gift from Scott so it can make money for the organization. But a near-term investment in talent attraction and retention is likely for the Auburn Hills-based provider of substance use, autism, occupational and speech therapy, vocational and mental health services.
Demand for mental health services has risen during the pandemic. At the same time, employee turnover is rampant, with many clinical staff including social workers, psychiatrists and Applied Behavior Analysis therapists leaving companies with large numbers of Medicaid patients to take positions at employers with private payors and fewer reporting requirements that enable them to spend more time with clients, Wirth said.
Since the start of the pandemic, Easterseals has hired 161 new employees, nearly all in mental health services. It currently employs 530, most in Oakland County but others in Macomb County, Flint and Grand Rapids.
"There's very large competition for our most prized assets: our staff," Wirth said.
"We need to make we're recruiting and retaining the best staff possible. That's our first priority with some of the Scott funds and (investments in) the technology in order to better serve people and support our staff."
Beyond that, the gift gives it the ability to move when it sees the right ideas, he said.
"Now, if we think something has the right ROI for the people we serve, the staff, we're going to go ahead and do it."
Like the others, Forgotten Harvest isn't rushing to spend its $25 million gift.
"Management and the board feel like it's responsible to take the time to thoughtfully use the funds," said Christopher Ivey, head of marketing and communications.
The gift represents about two years' worth of operating expenses for the food rescue. "Whatever we create or put forward with this gift, we want to make sure that's sustainable for the community long term," he said.
Forgotten Harvest's board has authorized the use of about $2.5 million of the gift to help complete its $17 million campaign to fund a larger facility. But Ivey said the organization has already raised $12.6 million, and management believes it can reach its goal without tapping the Scott gift.
"We're trying to really use it to make more impact," he said.
Forgotten Harvest is in the midst of finalizing a new five-year strategic plan that will include short-term, medium-term and long-term goals for the organization and investment of the $25 million Scott gift. It's hired a new chief information officer to help it use data more effectively to meet new data goals in the plan, Ivey said.
Some part of the Scott gift could be used to expand the number of pantries on the Linked to Feed system it operates with Gleaners Community Food Bank of Southeastern Michigan to collect information about where people show up for emergency food assistance, when and how often, so they can better tailor inventory and offer closer sites if people are traveling long distances.
"Through COVID, one of the things we learned is that our pantry network is fragile," given that it's run by volunteers, many of them senior citizens, Ivey said.
It will use some part of the Scott gift to expand and stabilize the pantry network in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties to ensure that anyone in need of food assistance will know where to go, when to go and have food to pick up when they get there, he said.
The specifics of that may take even another six months to figure out, Ivey said.
"We're just taking our time to make sure we do it right."
In December, the YWCA of Metropolitan Detroit said it would use its $1 million gift to support agency programs including child care and its domestic violence shelters, as well as its general operations.
Invest Detroit's focus is to strike a balance between immediate assistance and long-term support. It's working to ensure that Detroit small businesses, developers and entrepreneurs of color have a full range of tools and resources — lending, grants and capacity — to recover from the current crisis but also have long-term support like technical assistance and equitable access to capital, Randy Hyde, senior vice president, external relations, said in a email.
United Way is focusing on three things as it looks at where to spend the $25 million gift over the next few years: addressing immediate crisis during the pandemic; diversity, equity and inclusion; and innovative ways of finding new solutions to old problems.
It granted $5 million over the winter to support COVID relief and immediate assistance, said Eric Davis, vice president of community impact. It plans to add another $1 million to its annual allocations made to organizations working to help people meet their basic needs.
On the equity front, United Way has brought in a DEI team to watch over its own internal culture, how it engages with the community and works to help the community achieve equity through efforts such as its 21-day Equity Challenge of curated virtual sessions designed to help people think about equity and change behaviors where needed.
The agency was already two years into developing a community information exchange to enable digital communication and record-sharing among organizations providing health and human services and host key information used to determine eligibility for assistance so clients don't have to keep providing the same thing over and over.
When complete, the system will build upon the 211 health and human service referral hotline, enabling, for example, a health care provider who identifies food insecurity in a patient to connect digitally to an emergency food provider in the region. It will also help identify hurdles to people keeping those appointments and receiving assistance, like transportation, and eventually help people overcome them by adding more service providers.
The Scott gift will enable the remaining development of the community information system with Michigan 211 and other partners to move forward, Davis said.
He projects the project will draw hundreds of thousands rather than millions of dollars in additional investment.
But from an impact standpoint, "this is transformation," Davis said.
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