It’s a moment Terry Warren won’t soon forget.
Warren — the president and CEO of the Clinton-based, 501©3 nonprofit Valley Professionals Community Health Center — went to his board of directors and leadership team last year with some big, hard-to-fathom news.
Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott’s Yield Giving program wanted give Valley Professionals a donation. Scott’s group chose the local health center as one of 360 organizations around America “working to advance opportunities of people in underserved communities,” according to Yield’s website explanation.
Valley Professionals aims to deliver a wide range of primary care to all individuals of any age and families, and is a Federally Qualified Health Center. It operates eight Wabash Valley locations, such as West Terre Haute’s clinic — an asset long sought-after in the town, when it opened in 2022.
More than 25,000 patients received care in a one-year span at the eight Valley Professionals locations, according to September 2023 figures. Its services include primary care, dental, behavioral health, patient resources, school-based, psychiatry, pregnancy and family, addictions, endocrinology, chiropractic, sports medicine, an after-hours clinic and tele-visits.
That work apparently impressed Scott’s Yield program. The philanthropic group informed Warren it was considering a donation to Valley Professionals.
When Yield Giving first contacted Warren, its guidelines required him to not to disclose or discuss it, even to his board and leadership team. Warren was initially unfamiliar with Scott’s program, hesitant and skeptical. But after “conducting thorough research and verifying the legitimacy,” he decided to comply with Yield’s requirements through the selection process.
“I genuinely believed it was a scam,” Warren recalled last week. “However, I am incredibly grateful that everything worked out in the end.”
Indeed it did. Scott’s program chose to donate $5 million to the nonprofit health center.
“I still vividly recall the moment when I finally disclosed the matter to my board and senior leadership team,” Warren said. “Their reactions were a mix of surprise and disbelief, as if they thought I had lost my mind.”
It was real, though. Yield Giving quietly released the news of the Valley Professionals gift and 359 others last Dec. 6.
The incredible gift’s impact has already begun. It was given without a specified use. “The generous donation from MacKenzie Scott is an unrestricted gift, intended to directly support the Valley Professionals Community Health Center’s mission and goals,” Warren said. Several projects are underway as a result.
Valley Professionals is developing a new patient access center, which will serve as a hub for its eight clinics. It will enhance patient experience during phone calls — Valley Professionals fields 30,000 of those a month — and in-person visits. Also, a new dental office will be located on Indiana 163 in Clinton, doubling the capacity of Valley Professionals dental operations, Warren explained.
He’s unsure how Valley Professionals’ work came to the attention of the Yield Giving program.
“To this day, the circumstances surrounding how we came onto MacKenzie’s radar remain a mystery,” Warren said.
The Associated Press reported in April that Scott — the former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — has targeted grants from her Yield Giving program toward organizations focused on equity and justice, education, health and economic security, as well as democracy-based groups and those working on issues of race and ethnicity, and youth development.
Earlier this year, Scott’s program issued an open call for another round of grants.
Most of the grants awarded have gone to groups in the South, while many recently went to those in California and New York.
Scott doesn’t discuss the giving decisions, aside from short essays on the Yield Giving website. The 54-year-old San Francisco native, novelist and Princeton University graduate pledged to donate half of her wealth, the AP reported. Yield has distributed $17.3 billion to more than 2,300 nonprofits since 2019 “to use as they see fit for the benefit of others,” according to its website.
Recipients elsewhere range from a $3-million gift to Wind River Development Fund, a Native American-led economic-development and entrepreneurial nonprofit in Wyoming, to a $9-million gift to a small and new business support fund in Duluth, Minn., and a $15-million gift to a similar project in rural Maine, according to local news outlets in those regions.
Those donations by Scott’s group average $3.3 billion per year. That places her philanthropy among a group that includes the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with its plans to donate $8.6 billion in 2024, and Michael Bloomberg, who gave $3 billion last year, the AP reported, citing Chronicle of Philanthropy figures. She and Bezos were married for 27 years and divorced in 2019.
Warren’s only interactions concerning Yield Giving’s donation were with its team, but he’d like to personally thank Scott someday.
“It would be an incredible honor to have the opportunity to meet her in person one day and express my heartfelt gratitude for her generous donation,” Warren said, “which will positively impact our local community for many years to come.”
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