An unexpected gift gives new hope to an American charity in turbulent times.

The Trevor Project, a 2SLGBTQ+ nonprofit, has seen a spike in calls to its youth crisis line during the current Donald Trump presidency. At the same time, the administration has cut funding to the organization, and thus its ability to respond to those calls.

Then a phone call from author MacKenzie Scott’s philanthropic organization changed everything.

Scott — a billionaire philanthropist whose fortune comes largely from her ex-husband, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — has given the Trevor Project $45 million (C$62.2 million).

“We almost fell off our chairs,” said Janson Wu, the organization’s senior vice president of philanthropy As it happens host Nil Köksal.

The undisputed donation is almost twice as large as the nonprofit’s $47 million annual budget $25 million in federal funding she lost under Trump.

“It was a wonderful surprise,” Wu said.

Critical time

It couldn’t have come at a more critical time, Wu said.

In July, the White House stopped funding the “Press 3” option 988 National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline for bisexual, homosexual and gender non-conforming young people, whose staff was helped by Project Trevor.

At the time, Rachel Cauley, a spokeswoman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, he told NBC News the administration would not “give taxpayer money to a chat service where children are encouraged by ‘counselors’ to embrace radical gender ideology without their parents’ consent or knowledge.”

The Trevor Project continues to run an independent hotline in the US that reaches around 250,000 young people a year, but has served another 250,000 callers through Press 3.

“Unfortunately, we had to reduce our capacity to respond to the calls,” Wu said.

“What this gift will enable us to do, first and foremost, is to strengthen our crisis services to ensure that we have the capacity to respond to that call and to ensure that there is a caring and competent counselor on the other end of the line when a young person reaches out to us.”

Those calls, he says, come hard and fast.

Wu says Project Trevor saw a 700 percent increase in calls after Trump’s inauguration in 2025, and continues to see spikes “every time there’s a new attack.”

For example, he says, they saw an increase in calls after that this week’s US Supreme Court case challenging state bans on transgender women and girls from competing in girls’ school sports.

“We know that young people are paying attention and that their mental health is suffering because of political rhetoric and political attacks on our community,” Wu said.

Big donor

The surprise donation came from Scott’s philanthropic organization, The Giving Pledge, which has committed $7 billion to non-profit organizations by 2025.

The Giving Pledge did not respond to CBC’s request for comment.

Scott is known for making large, unrestricted gifts to non-profit organizations. She previously gave the Trevor Project 6 million US dollars in 2020.

With the exception of an open call in 2023, it does not solicit project proposals or accept applications.

Despite the size of her gifts, which often exceed the annual budget of the recipient organization, research by the US nonprofit Center for Effective Philanthropyfound that the vast majority of users managed the windfall responsibly and saw long-term benefits.

Elisha Smith Arrillaga, vice president of research at the Center for Effective Philanthropy, said that’s likely because of the vigorous vetting Scott’s team, whose members are mostly unknown, conducts before gifts are made.

Wu says Project Trevor is very familiar with Scott’s vetting process and takes his team’s trust very seriously.

“One of the things that her team really wants to convey is that Ms. Scott’s intent with these transformational gifts is really about long-term impact and planning,” he said.

“We’re going to take the next few months to really think about how best to use this incredible investment. How can it sustain our organization and our life-saving mission, not just in the coming months or even years, but for generations to come?”

The Trevor Project has faced financial and organizational challenges in the past.

Board of a non-profit organization ousted the controversial CEO in 2022 after several years of rapid growth, it led to internal conflicts. Since then it has gone through a period of downsizing and layoffs.

Thirty-nine percent of 2SLGBTQ+ youth seriously consider suicide, according to Project Trevor’s own research.

Wu says the calls coming to their line are “heartbreaking.”

When he feels overwhelmed, Wu says he reminds himself of the progress made in 2SLGBTQ+ rights during his lifetime.

“When I zoom out a little bit, you can see that steady progression toward more inclusion, more compassion, more justice. But for young people who haven’t been on this planet that long, it can be a lot harder to have that perspective,” he said.

“That’s why I think this mission and this work are so important, because of the vulnerability of young people.”