DC Central Kitchen is honored to announce a powerful $15 million gift from MacKenzie Scott. This is the single largest charitable gift in our 35-year history! It comes at a time when demand for DC Central Kitchen’s recipe of healthy food, good jobs, and hope is at an all-time high.
One of our foundational values is transparency. We are committed to using this one-time investment in ways that reflect our mission, our established programmatic goals for 2025 and beyond, and our community’s stated needs and aspirations. We plan to put the bulk of this contribution to work over the next two to three years as our city continues to recover from the pandemic and years of widening economic and health disparities along racial lines.
This gift will allow us to:
- Challenge the racial wealth gap in DC by making focused, additional investments in staff 401(k) plans that help our graduates, many of whom have experienced lengthy periods of incarceration, homelessness, and unemployment before joining our team, achieve longer-term financial security.
- Expand our acclaimed Culinary Job Training program as we respond to record enrollment among residents facing barriers to employment and maximize our new training facilities.
- Safeguard the continued employment and benefits of hundreds of front-line workers via a short-term reserve that will insulate them from delays in contract reimbursements or sudden shocks to the local economy.
- Ensure continued accessibility to our new facility for culinary students, front-line staff, and volunteers via sustainable options that promote and complement mass transit options in Southwest DC.
- Build on our support and services for a series of communities that are integral to our mission and purpose, and facing increased challenges: older adults, returning citizens, opportunity youth, providers of innovative grassroots food security solutions, and our Southwest DC neighbors.
- Partially sustain our significantly increased provision of nutritious, locally-sourced meals and groceries to DC residents who are falling between the cracks of existing programs or struggling with reductions in available benefits and resources.
We are committed to ensuring that this remarkable gift generates the maximum possible return for our city. This gift, by itself, will not fully underwrite the above objectives or sustain them forever. It will allow us to forge ahead with confidence, knowing that our community of supporters and volunteers will continue to make our work possible and see their impact go even farther thanks to the catalytic power of Ms. Scott’s investment.
To learn more about our journey and ambitious goals for meeting critical community needs, please visit our website.