Reflecting on her most recent round of giving and her approach going forward, Scott quoted a saying she recently learned is used in disability communities: “Nothing about us without us.”
“For me, it’s another beautiful and powerful reminder,” Scott wrote. “I needn’t ask those I care about what to say to them, or what to do for them. I can share what I have with them to stand behind them as they speak and act for themselves.”
MacKenzie Scott Just Announced That She’s Donated $2 Billion To Hundreds Of Groups Over The Last Seven Months
|
MacKenzie Scott
Invision
Forbes estimates she has now given away $14.4 billion since her 2019 divorce from Jeff Bezos.
Over the last seven months, MacKenzie Scott donated $2 billion “to 343 organizations supporting the voices and opportunities of people from underserved communities,” according a Medium post by the billionaire philanthropist Monday. She has now given away a total of $14.4 billion to more than 1,500 organizations since her divorce from Jeff Bezos in 2019, according to Forbes’ estimates.
That’s more than all but four Americans, each of whom have had a lot longer to give their money away: Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates and George Soros.
The announcement came the same day Scott’s ex-husband Bezos appeared alongside his partner Lauren Sanchez on CNN, declaring that he also plans to give away most of his fortune, worth an estimated $122 billion, to charity during his lifetime. So far, he has a lot of catching up to do, having donated only $2.4 billion to charity, according to Forbes’ estimates.
While the specific amounts donated to each of the 343 organizations mentioned in Scott’s Medium post weren’t disclosed, many of the larger gifts were previously announced by recipients, including: $122.6 million to Big Brothers Big Sisters in March, $100 million to the Urban League in November, $84.5 million to Girl Scouts of America in October, $44 million to mentorship program Friends of the Children in August and $15 million in October to VisionSpring, a New York nonprofit that sells affordable eyeglasses to low-income customers in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
A core part of Scott’s giving philosophy involves her stepping back and letting individual nonprofits choose how to allocate her donation. But as Forbes reported earlier this month, it was Scott and her team—not the organizations’ national offices—who chose which Girl Scout Councils, and which Big Brother Big Sister chapters received the funds.
In her latest Medium post, Scott wrote that a searchable database of gifts, announced in late 2021, will be released “soon.”
While Scott continues to give away her wealth away at unprecedented speed, she still has a way to go to make good on her 2019 pledge to give away at least half of it over the course of her lifetime. Her stake in Amazon, which accounts for virtually all of her fortune, is still worth an estimated $29.3 billion, despite a terrible year for tech stocks–it was worth $53 billion in March 2021.
Reflecting on her most recent round of giving and her approach going forward, Scott quoted a saying she recently learned is used in disability communities: “Nothing about us without us.”
“For me, it’s another beautiful and powerful reminder,” Scott wrote. “I needn’t ask those I care about what to say to them, or what to do for them. I can share what I have with them to stand behind them as they speak and act for themselves.”
No comments:
Post a Comment