David Wilson had to pull his car over when he got the call.

Sitting in an empty parking lot, the usually reserved president of Morgan State University said he let out a bellow so loud he thought half the city could hear.

He had just received shocking news: Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott was donating $63 million to the historically Black university, the largest gift in its history. It was the second donation from Scott, bringing her total investment in the Northeast Baltimore college, to which she has no connection, to a whopping $103 million in five years.

“I was just so thrilled that, once again, she was noticing that we at Morgan show up and do the work,” Wilson said.

Wilson has never actually spoken to the famously private benefactor, which makes it an unusual arrangement. Nobody at Morgan State knew they were being considered for a second gift, he said. They didn’t even know that was an option.

Scott’s gifts are now coveted in the nonprofit world. Her team works largely in the shadows, only disclosing her ties to the gift right before it lands in the institution’s bank account.

Morgan State is just one of the dozens of HBCUs, tribal colleges and minority-serving institutions that Scott has given to in recent years. A significant portion of the philanthropist’s gifts have gone to organizations that uplift communities of color and support diversity at a time when President Donald Trump’s administration has used threats to funding to dismantle diversity efforts at colleges, universities and other institutions.

Locally, she’s also given twice to the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, including a $38 million gift announced last week.

The Banner could not reach Scott for comment; she almost never gives media interviews, instead writing personal essays on her website. In one post from 2020, she wrote that she tasked her philanthropic team to find organizations “operating in communities facing high projected food insecurity, high measures of racial inequity, high local poverty rates, and low access to philanthropic capital.”

Scott’s gifts are unusual in part because they’re unrestricted, said Karin George, principal consultant at Washburn McGoldrick, an educational-fundraising consulting firm. That means the receiving institutions can do whatever they want with the money.

“An unrestricted gift gives the organization the greatest flexibility, especially at times when they need to make key decisions,” George said.

George, an expert in higher education fundraising, said she doesn’t know of a similar philanthropist. Most large donors choose institutions that they know in some capacity, she said.

“It’s one of those dream conversations to have as a university leader,” George said. “Because this person didn’t require any convincing.”

A mysterious phone call in early October was Wilson’s first hint at what was to come. The caller said an unnamed high-profile donor wanted to contribute to Morgan State. Just two weeks later, Scott’s $63 million was transferred to the university.

“As far as I can tell, MacKenzie Scott has a team with eyes and ears all over the place,” Wilson said.

Multimillion-dollar gifts usually take years to lock down, said Endia DeCordova, the university’s vice president for institutional advancement and the executive director of the MSU Foundation. Usually fundraisers like DeCordova have to spend a significant amount of time courting potential donors. For Scott to give so quickly is quite unusual.

“It’s really just spinning the world of philanthropy upside down, because that’s totally opposite of what we’re used to,” she said.

Wilson will place $60 million of the money into Morgan State’s endowment, which will be partially invested into financial assistance for the university’s 11,500 students.

The rest will go toward creating a new center on brain science and boost work on artificial intelligence, including plans to create an AI system that the entire university will run on.

With Morgan State’s 2020 $40 million gift, Wilson placed $38 million into the university’s endowment. The remaining money was used to start the Center for Urban Health Equity, in partnership with the state of Maryland, and the National Center for the Elimination of Educational Disparities.

“The gift placed us as an institution that is not running away from the challenges that we see facing marginalized and urban communities,” Wilson said. “It is enabling us to stay true to our DNA, and that is equity and justice and inclusion.”

The Center for Urban Health Equity used its money from Scott to invest in small community projects and organizations across Baltimore. So far, the center has partnered with more than a dozen organizations and given out over $200,000 in seed funding. Last year, the center used some funds to help build a mini-golf course across the street from subsidized housing in West Baltimore’s Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood to improve residents’ outdoor space.

“The money goes directly to uplifting and empowering the community,” said Kim Dobson Sydnor, director of the center and dean of the university’s School of Community Health and Policy. “MacKenzie Scott gave money to Morgan State as a trusted institution and allowed us to use our knowledge base and history to directly impact our community.”

That’s also the case for those at the university’s National Center for the Elimination of Educational Disparities, said Glenda Prime, dean of the university’s School of Education and Urban Studies and leader of the center.

The center aims to reduce educational disparities by funding research projects, giving underprivileged students access to Morgan State facilities and certifying new teachers. It’s also partnering with the state to study Maryland’s literacy program.

Prime presented the idea for the center to Wilson years ago, and while he was interested, the university did not have the funds to open it. Then Scott’s first gift appeared.

“The gift was truly transformative,” Prime said. “It allowed us to start the center and provided momentum for us to build awareness and get our mission off the ground.”

The two new centers that Wilson plans to open, on brain science and artificial intelligence, will help the university’s goal to achieve a coveted Research One Carnegie classification. Morgan State would be the second HBCU in the country to do so.

The university also created an endowed professorship in brain science and partnered with the African Ancestry Neuroscience Research Initiative to study the brains of African Americans. Through the Lieber Institute for Brain Development, Morgan State researchers have access to more than 500 African American brains to help study the differences between them and the brains of those with European ancestry.

“In this climate where we’re seeing an attack on equity, diversity and inclusion, we have not moved away from that,” DeCordova, the head of the university’s foundation, said. “That’s the core of who we are as an institution.”

For Morgan State’s president, the support from Scott, a stranger, was especially meaningful.

“I am the son of a sharecropper in Alabama who could only give his son $5 for college,” Wilson recalled. “Now I am receiving from the hands of such a benevolent person this much money to enable so many others like me to fulfill their dreams.”

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.