Nine Georgia non-profits are among those receiving new grants from philanthropist Mackenzie Scott.

The billionaire announced more than $640-million in donations, including 15-million for the organizations in Georgia. The Tommy Nobis Center and Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence are among them.

Scott has been giving away much of her fortune since divorcing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Scott and her team have researched and selected organizations without an application process and provided them with large, unrestricted gifts.

In a brief note on her website, Scott wrote she was grateful to Lever for Change, the organization that managed the open call, and the evaluators for “their roles in creating this pathway to support for people working to improve access to foundational resources in their communities. They are vital agents of change.”

Competitions like Scott’s open call can help organizations who do not have connections with a specific funder get considered, said Renee Karibi-Whyte, senior vice president, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

“One of the best things about prize philanthropy is that it surfaces people and organizations and institutions that otherwise wouldn’t have access to the people in the power centers and the funding,” she said. Her organization also advises funders who run competitive grants or philanthropic prize competitions to phase the application to diminish the burden of applying on any organization that is eliminated early.

The open call asked for applications from nonprofits who are community-led with missions “to advance the voices and opportunities of individuals and families of meager or modest means,” Yield Giving said on its website. Only nonprofits with annual budgets between $1 and $5 million were eligible to apply.

The awardees were selected through a multilayer process, where applicants scored fellow applicants and then the top organizations were reviewed by a panel of outside experts.

Scott has given away $16.5 billion from the fortune she came into after divorcing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Initially, she publicized the gifts in online blog posts, sometimes naming the organizations and sometimes not. She launched a database of her giving in December 2022, under the name Yield Giving.

In an essay reflecting on the website, she wrote, “Information from other people – other givers, my team, the nonprofit teams I’ve been giving to – has been enormously helpful to me. If more information about these gifts can be helpful to anyone, I want to share it.”

Smith Arrillaga, of CEP, said it was important that Scott is, “continuing to honor her commitment in terms of giving away her wealth, even though she’s thinking, changing and tweaking the ‘how’ of how it’s done and she’s still trying to go with the spirit of what she committed to.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.