The City University of New York (CUNY) says it has capped an extraordinary year in philanthropy after author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott announced two CUNY colleges were among recipients of gifts to organizations and institutions supporting those that have been hardest hit by the pandemic.
Lehman College, CUNY’s only majority-Hispanic senior college, received $30 million. The college, recently ranked by the American Council on Education, tops all Hispanic-Serving Institutions for its efforts to help students improve their academic standing through education.
“On behalf of the entire Lehman College community, we are deeply grateful to Ms. MacKenzie Scott for this extremely generous gift that will enable the college to further its mission as a catalytic anchor institution in the Bronx,” said Lehman College President Daniel Lemons in a statement. “The gift is transformative and comes to the college because of Lehman’s track record of outstanding advancement of social mobility for our students, a record that exists through the long-standing efforts on our students’ behalf by every part of the college.”
The Borough of Manhattan Community College, the largest of CUNY’s colleges, also received $30 million, each gift from MacKenzie Scott among the largest in CUNY’s history.
“Our institution prides itself on altering the lives of our students in ways that will help them obtain career training, obtain their dream of earning a degree, and moving up the socioeconomic ladder,” said Borough of Manhattan Community College President Anthony E. Munroe. “Our students have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. This gift will have a generational and exponential impact on our students and BMCC institution’s ability to create new models and innovative ways to address our students’ needs in and outside of the classroom.”
The CUNY colleges were among 384 recipients selected from a total field of 6,490 organizations, wrote Scott, who relied on hundreds of field experts, funders, and nonprofit leaders to pare down her list, measuring program outcomes and assessing the organizations’ ability to make effective use of the funding. The gifts were on top of $1.7 billion that Scott gave to 111 nonprofits and institutions earlier in the year.
“On behalf of the CUNY community, I thank MacKenzie Scott for recognizing the role we play in providing an accessible onramp to the middle class for all New Yorkers,” said Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez. “This groundbreaking gift will allow the nation’s largest urban public university to continue to fulfill its mission as an unparalleled engine for upward social mobility at a time when people are turning to CUNY to get back on their feet. A gift of this size as we turn the page on such a challenging year brings us renewed hope for the opportunities it will create in the months and years ahead.”
“These incredible gifts are a clear signal that the message about CUNY’s value-proposition – academic excellence, affordability, social mobility, and commitment to social justice – is resonating in the philanthropic community nationally and outside our traditional circle of supporters,” added Chancellor Matos Rodríguez. “I invite other philanthropists committed to these values dear to CUNY and myself, to take a look at the transformational nature of the work going on across our 25 colleges.”
In August, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded $10 million to CUNY to drive change across 25 campuses. The gift included $2.5 million for the Chancellor’s Emergency Relief Fund, established swiftly in April to help students weather the economic impact of the pandemic.
Earlier in the year were initial gifts of $1 million each from the Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation and the James and Judith K. Dimon Foundation and later $1 million from Robin Hood.
By the fall, the fund had grown to more than $8 million. Separately, CUNY’s 25 campuses raised $8.6 million for a total of nearly $17 million in emergency relief funds.
CUNY Tuesday, the one-day of giving on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, raised a record of nearly $2.4 million from over 6,000 donors for the university. And in November, BNY Mellon awarded $10 million to CUNY to support innovative educational programs and workplace initiatives that target underserved New Yorkers.
More than 80 percent of CUNY graduates stay in New York, contributing to all aspects of the city’s economic, civic, and cultural life and diversifying the city’s workforce in every sector.
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