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This New Mexico organization received $50 million donation from MacKenzie Scott
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Only a couple of times in her career has Angelique Albert, the CEO of Native Forward Scholars Fund, a nonprofit that helps Native Americans go to college, cried in a professional setting.
She did so not long ago when she received a call notifying her that MacKenzie Scott was donating $50 million to her organization.
“We can go from now giving 1,200 scholarships annually to thousands of scholarships annually,” Albert said in a Friday interview with the Journal. “The impact that that will make in the lives of our students is so big.”
The donation is not the first that the philanthropist and ex-wife of Amazon founder and Albuquerque native Jeff Bezos has made to Native Forward. In 2020, she gave the organization $10 million.
However, Albert said a key difference between the two donations is that all of the money will go directly to students this time.
“I want 100% of it to go to student scholarships; it’s the biggest need; it’s what we need,” she said, adding that she would ask the organization’s board of directors to create a scholarship endowment.
While serving Native Americans across the country, the Native Forward Scholars Fund is headquartered in Northeast Albuquerque, and Albert said New Mexicans will reap the benefits of the donation.
“New Mexico is always one of our top three funded states; they’re always at the top, so we are a known resource to the tribal communities here,” Albert said. “This gift will go directly into the hands of a lot of students who are attending college here.”
Scott’s donation marks her most recent philanthropic activity in New Mexico. In 2024, she donated $25 million to Albuquerque-based Homewise and $10 million to Santa Fe-based Anchorum Health Foundation. Before that, she made multiple donations to the United Way of North Central New Mexico.
