CommunityWorks gets a share of massive donation.

Greenville's CommunityWorks was selected among 384 organizations across the United States to receive part of a $4.2 billion donation from MacKenzie Scott, a writer and philanthropist formerly married to Jeff Bezos of Amazon.

"It would be easy for all the people who drew the long demographic straws in this crisis to hole up at home feeling a mix of gratitude and guilt and wait for it to be over but that's not what's happening," MacKenzie said in a statement. "The proliferation of community fridges, COVID relief funds, impromptu person-to-person Venmo gifts, viral debt relief campaigns, and mutual aid initiatives has been swift and uplifting."

Mackenzie hired a group of professional consultants who used a data-driven approach to parse down the 6,490 organizations considered to those that had the strongest leadership teams and results, especially in terms of combating food insecurity, racial inequality, poverty and low access to philanthropic capital, according to a news release.

CommunityWorks' share of the donation was not disclosed.

In 2020, CommunityWorks served 338 small businesses through coaching and access to capital, 229 more than last year...