Michael Waller, executive director of Georgia Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, called it a “long shot.”

But the effort paid off. On March 19, Waller found out that Georgia Appleseed had received a $1 million award from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. 

“It’s particularly humbling,” Waller said in a telephone interview. “It shows there’s a lot of trust in us.”

Nationwide, 6,353 organizations applied for McKenzie Scott’s 2024 Yield Giving Open Call initiative. Of those, 361 small nonprofits received a total of $640 million from Scott, who has celebrated “trust-based” philanthropy. Only nonprofits with annual budgets between $1 and $5 million were eligible to apply.

“What was interesting about this process is that they didn’t ask us what we wanted to do with the money,” Waller said. “Most of the application was about what we have already done. There are unrestricted funds.”

On one level, however, Waller wasn’t surprised.

“I think Georgia Appleseed is the best investment anyone can make if they are interested in systemic reform to improve the lives of children in Georgia,” Waller said about his nonprofit that protects the rights and well-being of Georgia’s most underrepresented children—keeping them in school, in stable, healthy homes, and out of the criminal justice system. “To be honest, this was a long shot. We went for it, but I was operating under the assumption we weren’t going to get it. But I thought we were a great candidate.”

Georgia Appleseed was not the only nonprofit in the state celebrating this week.

According to Yield Giving, the eight other Georgia nonprofits receiving grants were:

• Smart from the Start: a youth development and early learning initiative already operating in Boston and Washington, D.C., and is expanding in Atlanta and Philadelphia ($2 million).
• Ethné Health: a Clarkston-based nonprofit that provides healthcare to the…