She mostly gives marginalized organizations. Many Black colleges have received tens of millions of millions. She has however decided to not disclose amounts any more as it detracts from the process.
One of the country’s most prominent philanthropists released an update on her giving, but didn’t say how much money she’s given out or who received it.
MacKenzie Scott, the former wife of Amazon AMZN, -1.13% founder Jeff Bezos, who has publicly announced more than $8.5 billion in grants to nonprofits since the couple’s 2019 split, posted an essay on Medium on Wednesday titled “No Dollar Signs This Time.”
In December 2020, Scott penned a Medium post announcing more than $4.1 billion in gifts to 384 organizations, many of them grassroots groups serving historically marginalized people. She followed that up with a June 2021 post revealing that she had sent more than $2.7 billion to 286 “high-impact organizations.”
But in her latest letter, Scott, whose current net worth is estimated at $59.2 billion, omitted details and said she hoped media coverage would focus on broadening society’s definition of philanthropy. “How much or how little money changes hands doesn’t make it philanthropy,” Scott wrote. “Intention and effort make it philanthropy. If we acknowledge what it all has in common, there will be more of it.”
That’s why, she explained, she uses the word “giving” instead of “philanthropy” to describe what she’s doing with her money, and that’s also why “I’m not including here any amounts of money I’ve donated since my prior posts,” she said.
We tend to give more focus to things we can tally, and to rank everything else,” Scott wrote. “Why does one form of compassionate action, one group of beneficiaries, one group of givers have to be more important than the others? Financially valuable versus socially valuable.”
Scott said she’ll leave it up to groups who’ve received her money to “speak for themselves first if they choose to, with the hope that when they do, media focuses on their contributions instead of mine.”
The sheer size and speed of Scott’s philanthropy has indeed won her plenty of media attention, as well as praise from philanthropy observers. She topped Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most powerful women this week, ahead of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.
Scott’s latest update is “absolutely remarkable,” and also “inspiring and problematic,” said philanthropy scholar Ben Soskis, senior research associate at the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.