When confetti exploded across her laptop screen during an executive team meeting last March, Emma Tobin panicked. “My immediate response was: This is spam,” said Tobin, who is the executive director of the Dorchester-based Family Nurturing Center. “This is the meanest spam I have ever seen.”

The email announced that her nonprofit had won a $2 million grant from the billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott—double the amount it had applied for. Minutes later, Tobin’s team verified that the email’s sender worked for Scott’s foundation and the room erupted in celebration.

“All four of us stood up and started dancing, because it was just the craziest moment,” Tobin said. “Easily the wildest thing that’s ever happened to me working in a nonprofit.”

Now, a year out, Tobin’s team is still adjusting to its new reality. 

The Center, which provides parenting education and early childhood development programs, was among the highest-scoring applicants in Scott’s first-ever open call for proposals through her Yield Giving initiative.

Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, is known for her efforts to redistribute her fortune through large-sum surprise donations to thousands of nonprofit organizations across the country.

Unlike her typical gifts, this grant was open call, and involved a rigorous, multi-stage process that included homemade videos, write-ups, and peer review.

The impact of this windfall extended beyond the organization’s typical annual budgeting. In a nonprofit world where grants typically come with specific requirements and detailed reporting mechanisms, Tobin said, this approach of providing funds with “no strings attached” represents a greater shift in philanthropy.

“For somebody to say, ‘Here you go, here’s $2 million... we trust you that you’re gonna do what’s best for your organization with this money,’ it’s game-changing,” Tobin said. “It allows you to be flexible, it allows you to be creative.”

To date, the Center has already implemented an all-staff raise, created several new positions, and expanded its reach. 

The agency serves more than over 7,500 people annually, primarily families with young children from Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan, and other city neighborhoods. Most are people of color who qualify for low-income programs, Tobin said, and many are immigrants.
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Surrounded by diaper boxes and bags of coat donations, Effie Morganstern and her two-year-old daughter Lucy sat on the center’s office floor organizing a pile of flower hair clips. Squeezed tight under Lucy’s arm, her baby doll Kaya has marker streaks across her face and head. Effie talked about how the center has proven to be a vital resource for her daughter and her family.  

“It’s a beautiful space,” she said. “We had no idea that all these toys and all these things were available for us.”

On this icy morning in late February, Effie had dropped by the center for the monthly diaper pantry. But, she said, since discovering the space, they have come frequently for the playgroups, holiday events, and other clothing drives. For Christmas, Effie signed Lucy up for presents through the Rudolph and Friends program, expecting maybe one gift. Instead, she ended up unwrapping six high-quality Melissa & Doug toys.

In coming to the center regularly with Lucy, Effie said, she has watched her daughter grow more comfortable in her own skin and with adults. As a parent, Effie noted, she herself has also learned some things. 

“Being with the teachers here and seeing them interact with the kids has sort of empowered me to be more like a kid,” she said, mentioning that she had Lucy later in life at 40. “I feel like I’ve grown because they teach me how to think like a child anyway.”

Judelys del Carmen, a program assistant at the Center, also said the organization’s philosophy had transformed her approach to parenting. “It works for the parents to really bring back who you were, so you can actually relate in really high empathy with your children,” she said.

The Family Nurturing Center focuses on four main program areas: parenting education, early childhood development, coalition and community building, and training for other service providers.

“This philosophy doesn’t tell parents that your children can do whatever they want,” del Carmen said. “It’s telling them, from a young age, that we can teach them to make smart choices by giving them choices. You’re not giving your power to your children; you encourage power on your children and keep maintaining yours.”

Through the Center’s programming, a 15-week curriculum designed to prevent child abuse and neglect while fostering stronger family bonds, del Carmen began to reconstruct her role as a parent. A single mother of two adult daughters—now 28 and 26—she had struggled with her relationship with them before joining the Center’s staff.

“The philosophy really changed my life,” she said. “It changed the relationship between me and my daughters. I didn’t think that I was going to have a relationship with my kids as grown-ups.”

Now working as a facilitator for the Spanish-speaking group at the Center, Del Carmen is witnessing firsthand the gradual transformation of families over the course of the program.

“It’s hard to change a life in 15 weeks, but it’s also possible,” she said. “And this is there to start that process. You see how parents come feeling that they’re powerless, and we help parents to see the personal power that they have.”
•••
In the playroom on the first floor, which doubles as an outpost for the diaper pantry, Nataly Dimate and Orlando Suarez sat in small red kids stools and watched as their three-year-old son Samual rummaged through buckets of toys.

On the wall above the parents, the playroom rules are outlined in English and Spanish. The final rule: Diviértete y explora. Have fun and explore.

The Suarezes, who immigrated from Colombia to Boston a year ago, said the Center has been one of few spaces where they have found a sense of community in the area.  “This is a space where we can speak our language,” Dimate said in Spanish. “So, we can interact with people, just with our own language.”

On their way out the front, diaper box in hand, Suarez scooped up a lone green balloon and hid it behind his back to surprise Samual with later.   
•••

The timing of this grant couldn’t have been better, Tobin said, since the organization was already developing its five-year strategic plan when the grant arrived. 

One of their first actions was giving every staff member a 7 percent raise—an action previously unthinkable. They’ve also created positions, including their first-ever marketing and communications manager and an impact and evaluation specialist, and expanded their services with virtual translation in various languages.

Even before Scott’s gift, the Nurturing Center had experienced tremendous growth in recent years. When Tobin joined as executive director in 2022, the annual budget was $3.8 million. Today it’s $6 million. From its origins at Boston Medical Center 30 years ago, the organization now operates four service locations, including offices in Hyde Park, Brighton, and in the city of Chelsea.

Despite the windfall, Tobin said, the organization is taking a conservative approach to the budgeting, allocating just over $400,000 of the $2 million in the first year of its strategic plan. Much of the remaining funding is invested to ensure long-term sustainability.

“This $2 million doesn’t let us off the hook for fundraising at all,” Tobin said. “It means we have to continue to meet all these ambitious goals, and then we can use this $2 million for growth.”

The organization is planning its fifth annual fundraising gala—scheduled for April 4 at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum, where it will honor former UMass Boston Chancellor Dr. Keith Motley and Mrs. Angela Motley. 

While the grant hasn’t transformed the organization, it has pushed the organization out of what Tobin describes as the “resource deficit mindset” common in nonprofits.

“These large unrestricted gifts, even for small organizations like Family Nurturing Center, have tremendous impact,” she said. “Organizations know what they need, and they actually know how to manage these resources.”

This story derives from a partnership between The Dorchester Reporter and the Boston University Department of Journalism. For information and tickets for the April 4 gala, visit here.