You might know MacKenzie Scott as the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, but she’s been making a name for herself lately as a philanthropist. According to Bloomberg Wealth, Scott donated nearly $3.9 billion over the past nine months to 465 organisations. She most recently donated $275 million to Planned Parenthood and 21 of its affiliates – the largest gift from a single donor in Planned Parenthood history.
“We are incredibly grateful for Ms. Scott’s extraordinary philanthropic investment,” Planned Parenthood Chief Executive Alexis McGill Johnson wrote in a statement on Twitter. “As we face the most serious attacks on access to abortion that we’ve seen in a generation, PPFA is proud to play a vital role in ensuring access to essential health care.”
In a Medium post, Scott explained her process for choosing organisations to donate to. “Our team’s focus over these last nine months has included some new areas, but as always our aim has been to support the needs of underrepresented people from groups of all kinds,” she wrote. “We don’t advocate for particular policies or reforms. Instead, we seek a portfolio of organisations that supports the ability of all people to participate in solutions.”
Included in the other $3.9 billion Scott has donated over the last nine months is a $436 million gift to Habitat for Humanity affiliates disclosed on Tuesday, per Bloomberg. Scott has also donated to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, the Climate Justice Resilience Fund, Achieving the Dream, the National Equity Project, and more.
According to Scott, her team is working on a website that will include more information about her donations and a searchable database of her grants. It “will go live only after it reflects the preferences of every one of these non-profit teams about how details of their gifts are shared,” she wrote on Medium.
Since her divorce from Bezos in 2019, Scott has made a number of secret donations to nonprofits and charitable organisations. Forbes reported in February that she had donated “$8.8 billion in less than two years to more than 780 organisations – more than four times what her ex-husband has donated so far in his lifetime.”
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Scott has a net worth of $55.7 billion.
