MacKenzie Scott announced Monday that she had given nearly $2 billion to 343 organizations over the past seven months. Scott has given a total of more than $13 billion to more than 1,200 organizations since 2020, according to a Chronicle tally.
The $1,990,800,000 in donations went to a broad range of organizations “supporting the voices and opportunities of people from underserved communities,” Scott said in a Medium post Monday.
They included grants that have already been publicized, such as $122.6 million to the national youth-mentoring charity Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, $38.8 million for Junior Achievement USA, and $84.5 million to the Girl Scouts of the USA and 29 local councils.
They also featured newly announced donations, including $15 million to Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which provides services nationwide.
“This unprecedented and timely gift will make a monumental difference in the lives of the most vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers as they strive to achieve their own American Dream,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service said in a statement announcing the grant.
In her post, Scott listed each organization she has supported and also noted her plans to release a full database of grantees so that others who might be interested in giving can learn more about their missions. She did not say when that information would be made public. In recent months, Scott had been leaving it up to individual charities to decide whether to publicize her gifts — an approach that some experts had criticized for lacking transparency.
‘Lived Experience’
Scott noted that many of the organizations listed were funds that pool donations and distribute them to small organizations, like the Third Wave Fund, which supports groups that work to advance gender justice, largely led by young people of color.
“The funds we picked look for teams with lived experience in the issues they’re addressing,” Scott said.
She encouraged other grant makers to donate to such funds as a strategy to ensure that money flows to groups most in touch with the needs of the communities they serve. As with most of Scott’s donations, her new contributions are unrestricted, which allows charities to use their grants for programs, operations, or other purposes that they see fit.
“I needn’t ask those I care about what to say to them or what to do for them,” Scott said in her post. “I can share what I have with them to stand behind them as they speak and act for themselves.”
Scott’s Medium post was released shortly after news came out about the philanthropic plans of her former husband, Jeff Bezos. He said he planned to give most of his $124 billion fortune to charity in his lifetime but did not say much about where or how that would happen.
