Expanding College Success for Low-Income Students

An unrestricted $42 million gift from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott and Yield Giving is helping 10,000 Degrees, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting students from low-income backgrounds, significantly expand its reach and help more students earn diplomas.

The donation, the largest in the organization’s history, will fund efforts outlined in a new five-year strategic plan aimed at delivering its programs to new communities, doubling the annual number of college students it supports from 5,000 to 10,000 and improving college completion and career outcomes. Under the plan, which spans fiscal years 2027 through 2031, the nonprofit seeks to raise the four-year community college transfer rate from 44 percent to 60 percent and increase the six-year bachelor’s degree–attainment rate among transfer students from 53 percent to 70 percent. It also hopes to increase the share of college students engaged in career success programming from 30 percent to 80 percent.

Kim Mazzuca, president and chief executive officer of 10,000 Degrees, said the gift does not change the organization’s strategic direction or priorities but instead allows it to make up-front investments to accelerate existing initiatives.

“We need more students to move through their education and land meaningful careers so they can go back into their communities and make positive change,” Mazzuca said. “So much weighs on education. That is the most important lever that we can pull right now, and Mackenzie Scott knew that, so we are going to make the absolute most of her gift and this strategic plan.”

A five-year road map: Scott’s donation to 10,000 Degrees is one of a series of major philanthropic investments she has made in organizations and institutions geared toward historically underserved students. In recent years, she has also awarded $50 million to the Native Forward Scholars Fund, $70 million to the United Negro College Fund and $63 million to Morgan State University.

For 10,000 Degrees, the investment will help advance the nonprofit’s strategic priorities, intended to strengthen its college success model and support its long-term growth.

The plan calls for expanding scholarships and college-readiness programs, as well as community college transfer support and career guidance. Mazzuca said affordability remains a significant barrier for community college students, many of whom balance their education with employment and family responsibilities. In the past fiscal year, the nonprofit helped students secure more than $70 million in additional financial aid.

“For some of our students, starting at a community college is just more affordable for themselves and their family,” Mazzuca said. “Many of our community college students stay close to home because they’re not only working but they’re also helping to support their families and the household income.”

The plan also outlines efforts to integrate technology and artificial intelligence into student services, including predictive analytics, real-time data and digital tools designed to improve personalized support.

“What AI is going to help us do is to actually be able to suss out the priority students that need certain levels of intervention,” Mazzuca said. “Then we can lean out where students don’t need us as much, and we can lean out from the administrative aspects of tracking students and inputting data.”

Other priorities include expanding the organization’s state and national policy influence through partnerships, advocacy and sharing effective practices with higher education networks. The plan also emphasizes strengthening organizational capacity through investments in systems, near-peer mentoring and operational efficiency, even as it works to ensure long-term financial sustainability by diversifying funding and strengthening its financial reserves.

Mazzuca said partnerships with existing college-access programs will be particularly important to the organization’s expansion, allowing 10,000 Degrees to build on established services while providing additional financial and academic support to help students persist and graduate.

“What we want to be able to do is to develop partnerships with those access programs and say, ‘Let us come in and augment the good work that you’re already doing,’” Mazzuca said.

Beyond college completion: The organization currently reports an 80 percent graduation rate among its four-year college students; of those, 85 percent graduate debt-free. Its strategic plan aims to build on those outcomes while placing greater emphasis on career preparation to help ensure students not only graduate but also transition into meaningful careers.

“There are fast-changing forces right now within workforce development and labor markets, given this huge disruption with AI,” Mazzuca said, adding that the students the nonprofit serves “have incredible talent, are innovators and have incredible dreams and hopes, but don’t have the social networks.”

“We want to make sure that our students, by the time they graduate, have already developed or are already in the midst of developing their social capital,” she added.

The expansion also comes at a time when questions about the value of a college degree have become increasingly prominent, Mazzuca noted.

“The rhetoric about ‘Is college worth it?’ is, to me, absurd when we know that a college degree is the absolute surest pathway to both social and economic mobility,” she said. “A college degree is critically important, especially for our students coming from low-income backgrounds. It is what is going to change their lives forever in terms of mobility and living a healthy, happy and prosperous life.”

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