MacKenzie Scott — a billionaire philanthropist and ex-wife to space boy Jeff Bezos — has pledged to give $2.7 billion to 286 organizations, she announced in a post on Medium post Tuesday.
“Because community-centered service is such a powerful catalyst and multiplier, we spent the first quarter of 2021 identifying and evaluating equity-oriented non-profit teams working in areas that have been neglected,” Scott wrote in her Medium post. “The result was $2,739,000,000 in gifts to 286 high-impact organizations in categories and communities that have been historically underfunded and overlooked.”
Many of the organizations she is donating to are non-elite public universities and smaller causes — including more than a half dozen non-Ivy League universities and dozens of grassroots organizations.
The organizations span from arts groups like Ballet Hispánico and the Apollo Theater; groups that focus on racial justice, like Race Forward, Borealis Philanthropy, and Chinese for Affirmative Action; higher education institutions like Florida International University and University of Texas Rio Grande Valley; and groups focused on gender equity like the Co-Impact Gender Fund. She wrote that she hopes the organizations can use these funds to “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.”
As part of her announcement, she said she was frustrated with the growing wealth gap, and said she worked with a team “to give away a fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change.”
“In this effort, we are governed by a humbling belief that it would be better if disproportionate wealth were not concentrated in a small number of hands, and that the solutions are best designed and implemented by others,” she wrote.
This is the third round of announcements Scott has made about her philanthropy, according to the Associated Press. In 2019, she signed onto The Giving Pledge, in which some of the world’s wealthiest people pledge half of their money to philanthropic causes. In 2020, she gave away billions to 35 colleges she described as providing “education for historically marginalized and underserved people” — predominately HBCUs and institutions that enroll large numbers of Native Americans, according to Inside Higher Ed. And, according to the New York Times, she donated nearly $6 billion to 500 organizations.
Scott says she has way too much money (she does) and is trying to give it away. When will her ex-husband do the same? Maybe when he gets back from space, but we’re not holding our breath.