Jami Duffy, the executive director of Youth On Record couldn't believe it at first when she received the donation inquiry in her inbox. In the past, she had never encountered the type of email she received that was promising a large monetary contribution from a mysterious donor.
According to Jami, “This came from a source I didn’t know. They didn’t say who the donor was in the email. They didn’t say it was coming from a foundation.”
After some investigation, Jami was able to determine that the donation came from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott and her husband, Dan Jewett. MacKenzie is also the ex-wife of Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, who she divorced in 2019. It turns out that earlier this week MacKenzie announced that she is donating $2.7 billion dollars to 286 organizations.
The $1 million dollar donation that MacKenzie has given to Youth on Records will help propel their, "Big Idea," which is an initiative to help connect aspiring creatives to working musicians across the country. It is a million that the organization has been working towards ever since its beginning in 2008. The core focus is to also bring more racial equality into the music business.
MacKenzie said that she wanted to focus on community-based, smaller, non-profits and wrote that, “People struggling against inequities deserve center stage in stories about change they are creating,” This is equally — perhaps especially — true when their work is funded by wealth. Any wealth is a product of a collective effort that included them. The social structures that inflate wealth present obstacles to them. And despite those obstacles, they are providing solutions that benefit us all.”
MacKenzie's contribution to Youth on Record has accounted for 25% of the total cost for the “Big Idea” project. The "Big Idea" project is set to launch in January of next year and will work to expand on Youth on Record's concept.
Jami Duffy hopes that the concept will expand to a national level and that as the "Big Idea" grows, that it will help America's music industry grow as well.
Sources:
https://www.youthonrecord.org/
https://www.denverpost.com/2021/06/17/denver-youth-on-record-mackenzie-scott-donation/