Billionaire philanthropist and Amazon co-founder MacKenzie Scott has donated $640 million to hundreds of nonprofits in her latest round of gifts — more than twice as much as the $250 million she had initially pledged to donate.
Scott’s organization Yield Giving, in partnership with the nonprofit Lever for Change, awarded funding to 361 of the over 6,000 organizations that applied; 279 received $2 million, while the remaining 82 received $1 million each.
“In light of the incredible work of these organizations,” Scott decided to hand out an additional 161 awards and increase the value of many of the grants. Initially, just 250 awards of $1 million each were planned.
In total, since 2020, Scott has donated $17.2 billion to 2,325 nonprofit organizations, according to a database maintained by Yield Giving. Her style of giving differs greatly from her ex-husband, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who recently donated a sizable $50 million to actor and entrepreneur Eva Longoria.
Scott and Bezos got divorced in 2019 after 25 years of marriage. Scott received about $38 billion in Amazon stock in their divorce settlement and signed the Giving Pledge, the philanthropic initiative created by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates to encourage the world’s richest individuals to give away at least half their wealth to charity.
“In addition to whatever assets life has nurtured in me, I have a disproportionate amount of money to share,” Scott wrote in a 2019 letter.
“My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful. It will take time and effort and care. But I won’t wait. And I will keep at it until the safe is empty.”
Many of the organizations that received donations in Scott’s latest round of gifts are focused on helping people in underserved and under-resourced communities, like 826 Valencia in San Francisco. Other recipients include GLAD, I AM ALS, Boys Hope Girls Hope of New York, Disability Rights Louisiana, and Kentucky-based Voice of Hope, which works with people suffering from substance use disorders.
“This Open Call award helps us take our fight for justice and equity to the next level, continuing our work to dismantle the legal, structural, and cultural barriers that contribute to gender inequity,” Gender Justice executive director Megan Peterson said in a statement. The organization received a $2 million grant from Scott.
Past recipients of Scott’s philanthropy have included Planned Parenthood, which received $275 million in 2022, and Prairie View A&M University, a historically Black university in Texas, which received $50 million in 2021. Thirty-nine percent of her donations worth at least $20 million have gone to southern organizations, with a focus on historically Black colleges and universities, according to the Harvard Business School.
Some (rare) criticism
Although philanthropy is usually universally well-regarded, her efforts have received scorn from a select few — namely Tesla CEO and the world’s third-richest man Elon Musk.
An X user who Musk often replies to complained that Scott donates money to organizations that deal with “issues of race and/or gender,” and said her foundation is “the ultimate expression of the most awful group in the U.S.,” in a post last month.
“Super rich ex-wives who hate their former spouse’ should filed [sic] be listed among ‘Reasons that Western Civilization died,” Musk replied, according to an archived version of the now-deleted post.
The thrice-divorced billionaire has been openly critical of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts and his companies have been repeatedly sued for discrimination against Black and Hispanic workers. In addition to his opposition against the types of nonprofits Scott donates to, Musk has previously complained that his companies had been sidelined because of Scott’s donations to “PACs posing as charities.”
“It’s safe to say that MacKenzie [ahem] Scott is not exactly a big fan of her ex-husband. Unfortunately, a lot of others are getting caught in the crossfire,” Musk wrote in May 2022.