MacKenzie Scott just gave another round of billions to philanthropy. She announced this morning that her most recent gifts total more than $2.7 billion for 286 nonprofits, most with missions that have historically received little from philanthropy.
She announced that she has focused the latest giving on two- and four-year colleges and universities with a record of successfully educating students who come from low-income and marginalized backgrounds and to religious and other nonprofits that are focused on working with organizations of other faiths and ethnic backgrounds to bridge divides between ethnic and religious groups.
She also gave to small arts and culture groups and said in her announcement that she and her husband, Dan Jewett, chose to prioritize this round of giving on charities that focus on helping local organizations that work to get nearby people involved in their missions and those that empower women and girls. As she did last year, Scott also made it a priority to support groups that are led by people of color.
This newest giving follows on her $5.7 billion in contributions to more than 500 nonprofits last year when she made headlines for awarding seven- and eight-figure donations to charities that rarely get such gifts and didn’t place any restrictions on how the money could be used. What also made her giving last year unique was the ripple effect it created because so many of the nonprofits that received Scott’s money turned around and gave some of it to much smaller groups.
A Plea to Other Donors
Scott, who is divorced from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, made a point of saying in this latest announcement that although she is giving these groups large gifts, these charities still need more support from many other donors and pointed out that most of the charities she and Jewett are supporting, as well as those groups’ employees, are pushed to the limits trying to carry out their missions.
“These are people who have spent years successfully advancing humanitarian aims, often without knowing whether there will be any money in their bank accounts in two months,” wrote Scott in her announcement. “What do we think they might do with more cash on hand than they expected? Buy needed supplies. Find new creative ways to help. Hire a few extra team members they know they can pay for the next five years. Buy chairs for them. Stop having to work every weekend. Get some sleep.”
In her announcement, Scott criticized the news media and others for a tendency to focus too much attention on the numbers — the huge amounts of money wealthy philanthropists like her give away — rather than on people leading nonprofits that are working to change systemic inequality and help those most in need.
“Putting large donors at the center of stories on social progress is a distortion of their role,” she wrote. “Me, Dan, a constellation of researchers and administrators and advisers — we are all attempting to give away a fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change.”
With such vast wealth — Scott’s net worth stands at about $60 billion, according to Forbes — it is unlikely that the news media or the public will ever stop focusing on the dollar amounts. However, in giving away so much more in unrestricted donations than many of her peers and writing about the inequality that is engulfing so many people’s lives, Scott just might be changing the conversation about the role of modern-day philanthropy.
