Oxnard Boys & Girls Club receives $3.2 million donation from MacKenzie Scott

Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has donated $3.2 million to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Oxnard and Port Hueneme, the largest gift since the organization opened in 1954.

Erin Antrim, the nonprofit’s CEO, described the gift as “transformational.”

"This is going to set our organization up for stability for future generations," Antrim said Friday, when the gift was publicly announced.

The Boys & Girls Club has approximately 3,400 members and operates 18 after-school programs throughout the Oxnard Plain, including 10 school sites, three full-service clubs, four neighborhood-based clubs and a club in juvenile hall. With the recent donation, Antrim hopes to expand services to around 7,000 members by next year.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Antrim said the organization has had to increase its operating budget and services beyond after-school hours to accommodate the switch to remote learning.

"We realized very quickly that was not going to work for a lot of kids, especially kids whose parents are essential workers," she said.

Though the organization was able to increase their operating budget by $1 million last year, Antrim described the switch as difficult to maintain until the donation from Scott.

"This gives us an opportunity to raise money long-term," Antrim said.

Scott is the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Through her ownership of a 4% stake in Amazon, she has an estimated net worth of $51.4 billion as of March 24, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Scott signed the Giving Pledge in 2019, vowing to give away at least half of her fortune to charitable organizations. With guidance from a panel of research advisers, Scott makes her donations unsolicited, often to the surprise of the recipients.

"We did not know they had been doing all of this research on our organization," Antrim said. "To be honest, I did not believe it at first."

The donation was part of a larger $281 million gift to Boys & Girls Clubs throughout the United States, which itself was among $3.8 billion gifted to 465 different nonprofits, according to Scott's online list. Antrim said the Boys & Girls Club was the only organization in the central coast tri-county region to receive a gift this round, although Scott has made previous donations to Ventura County organizations.

Last year, for instance, Scott made a similarly unprecedented donation when she gave $15 million to CSU Channel Islands, the largest in the institution’s history.

Antrim hopes the gift will inspire Ventura County residents to donate to the Boys & Girls Club, as their operating budget is entirely donation-based.

"We really want to call our community to action, to join Mackenzie Scott and make sure our clubs are strong operationally," Antrim said.

Donations can be made by visiting the organization’s website at bgcop.org.

Jeremy Childs is a breaking news and public safety reporter covering the night shift for the Ventura County Star. He can be reached by calling 805-437-0208 or emailing jeremy.childs@vcstar.com. You can also find him on Twitter @Jeremy_Childs.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Oxnard Boys & Girls Club receives $3.2 million from MacKenzie Scott