The Trevor Project receives $45M from Mackenzie Scott after a tough year and federal funding cuts

The Trevor Project, known for its hotline for LGBTQ+ youth, received $45 million through the end of 2025 from billionaire and author Mackenzie Scott, the organization said Monday.

The gift is the largest in the organization’s history but also a boon after years of management turmoil, layoffs and the loss of significant federal funding over the summer.

“I literally couldn’t believe it and it took a while. I really gasped,” said James Black, CEO of The Trevor Project, when he was notified of Scott’s gift.

Scott, whose fortune comes largely from her ex-husband Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, gave more than $7 billion to nonprofits in 2025, but this gift to the Trevor Project was not included in the donations she disclosed on her website in December. Scott previously gave $6 million to The Trevor Project in 2020.

In July, the Trump administration stopped providing special assistance to gay, trans and gender non-conforming youth called 988, the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. The Trevor Project was one of the organizations working on that option and lost $25 million in funding, the nonprofit said.

The Trevor Project continues to run an independent hotline for LGBTQ+ youth that Black says reaches about 250,000 youth annually, but they serve another 250,000 callers through the 988 Press 3 option, which was created for LGBTQ+ youth.

The US Department of Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) reported that between September 2022 and July 2025, more than 1.5 million contacts were routed through the service.

The Trevor Project has undergone years of internal turmoil after exploding in size from an organization worth more than $83 million in 2023 with an annual budget of $4 million in 2016, according to its public tax returns. The nonprofit’s board fired its CEO in 2022 and has gone through a series of layoffs, including in July. Black said the project’s 2026 budget is $47 million.

“We’re a smaller organization than we’ve ever been,” Black said. “And we’re going to continue to be really intentional and really conscious around growth and what growth really means for the organization.”

After it lost the 988 fund, the Trevor Project launched an emergency fundraiser that has brought in $20 million to date, Black said, which they hope Scott will see as proof that the organization is determined to stay and make it through this period.

“The people at Mackenzie Scott were clear, like this gift was made for long-term impact,” Black said, adding that they will take their time deciding how to use the funds.

Thad Calabrese, a professor at New York University who researches nonprofit financial management, said it’s not unusual for nonprofits that grow too quickly to run into financial problems. But he also said cuts in federal funding and general instability, especially for nonprofits, have hurt many organizations’ business models.

“Academic research has often seen public funding as very static, as a signal to donors that you’ve arrived as an institution, but the reality is that you’re now also open to changing political fortunes,” he said.

He said the research is also unclear on whether diversifying an organization’s revenue stream is always a good financial strategy.

“You’re less dependent on a few funders, but on the other hand, if you have a lot of different revenue streams, do you have the management capacity for that?” Calabrese asked, speaking generally and not commenting specifically on the Trevor project.

Scott has distinguished himself among the largest individual donors by making large, unrestricted gifts to nonprofit organizations, often with a focus on equity or social justice. With the exception of an open call in 2023, he does not solicit project proposals nor accept applications.

Despite the size of his gift, which now often exceeds the recipient organization’s annual budget, Research from the Center for Effective Philanthropy Concerns about nonprofits misusing Scott’s funds or growing unsustainably are largely unfounded. That may be because Scott’s team, whose members are largely anonymous, does extensive research on organizations before making grants.

In an essay announcing her 2025 gifts, Scott said, “The potential for peaceful, non-transactional giving has long been underestimated, often on the grounds that it is not financially self-sustaining, or that some of its benefits are difficult to track. But what if these hypothetical liabilities are actually assets? … What if there could be some powerful engines for our institution. Generosity?”

Black called Scott’s second gift “a powerful validation” of the Trevor Project’s mission and impact, adding, “We call it our turnaround story.”

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