On Tuesday, June 15, 2021 philanthropist MacKenzie Scott donated $40 million to California State University, Fullerton (CSUF)—the largest gift the school has ever received. As part of an overall $2.7 billion donation to 286 organizations, Scott’s team carefully selected high-impact, equity-oriented groups for their grants. Their goals included increasing access to education and promoting social justice within communities.
With the largest student body of the CSU’s, as well as being an ethnically diverse campus with students from almost 80 different countries, CSUF brings a multitude of ideas, perspectives, and experiences to Orange County. CSUF plans to use a portion of these resources to support social justice initiatives and programs on campus and within the community.
The donation places no restrictions on how this generous gift can be used, CSUF President Fram Virjee said that “the gift felt like an ‘affirmation’ to CSUF’s students, the majority of whom are minorities and many first-generation college goers, that they “deserve education, and that if we provide the resources for them, they can thrive and they can help us build Orange County into the place that we want it to be in the future.”
This gift provides the potential for CSUF—an epicenter of research, diversity, and social transformation—to benefit future generations of students and the Orange County community.
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