There’s one bright spot in a ceaselessly punishing news cycle: MacKenzie Scott, whose donations totaled a whopping $7.2 billion in 2025, gave a previously unannounced $45 million gift to The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ+ youth hotline.
The gift marks a drastic turn in the crisis support organization’s fortunes after the Trump administration slashed $25 million in funding for gay, trans and gender-nonconforming youth who used the 988 National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, which is staffed in part by The Trevor Project.
Jaymes Black, CEO of The Trevor Project, said the infusion of cash is critical as the organization has experienced budget turmoil and layoffs along with the loss of federal funding.
“We’re calling this our turnaround story,” Black said, according to Scripps News. Black added that when they found out about Scott’s gift at the end of 2025, “I actually gasped.”
The organization is deciding how to best use the windfall to achieve the highest impact, but leaders will “continue to be really intentional and really mindful around growth and what growth really means for the organization,” Black said. The 988 hotline received 16.5 million contacts since it launched in July 2022, including 11.1 million calls, 2.9 million texts, and 2.4 million chats, according to KFF Health News.
The Trevor Project continues to run an independent hotline that reaches about 250,000 LGBTQ+ young people each year, according to Scripps News, but lost its reach to about 250,000 more callers in crisis when the 988 hotline was defunded.
Scott, who was married to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos before they divorced in 2019, has made a point of giving away her billions to progressive causes and nonprofits focused on equity and social justice. She recently donated millions to historically black colleges and universities, and she was recently named by Forbes as the third most generous philanthropist.
