MacKenzie Scott has donated $14 billion since her divorce from Jeff Bezos…

MacKenzie Scott has donated $14 billion since her divorce from Jeff Bezos…

Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott says her donations have brought in more than US$14 billion ($21 billion) in funding to around 1,600 nonprofits since 2019, according to her long-awaited website. Yield Giveunveiled Wednesday evening.
Scott also announced that she plans to introduce an “open appeal process” that allows nonprofits seeking donations from her to send information to her for review. So far, Scott and his team have first secretly reached out to organizations they’re interested in, then offered unrestricted donations after receiving data from the group.

Bezos is worth $124 billion ($185 billion) and has said he will give away most of his fortune, but has not signed The Giving Pledge. Bezos has committed $10 billion over 10 years, or about 8% of his current net worth, to the Bezos Earth Fund.

Mackenzie Scott has made a number of ‘unconditional’ billion dollar donations in a bid to help close the ‘wealth gap’ (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
“Information from other people — other donors, my team, the nonprofit teams I’ve donated to — has been extremely helpful to me,” Scott wrote in a new essay. “If more information about these gifts can be useful to anyone, I want to share it.”

The website includes a database of all the gifts she has given, she said, some of which have not previously been disclosed. This includes a $75 million donation to the Co-Impact organization fund that supports gender equality and women’s leadership globally. Scott and her then-husband Dan Jewett were listed as donors to the fund, but the amount of the donation was not released. Co-Impact did not immediately respond to a request for comment.



Another $40 million donation to the nonprofit consulting group that helped Scott vet and screen recipients for his donations was also disclosed.

Mackenzie Scott and her new husband Dan Jewett are heavily involved in philanthropy. (The Pledge of Donation)
“Although we are an advisor to Scott on his philanthropy, we had no prior knowledge or involvement in the decision to include Bridgespan as a grant recipient,” the Bridgespan Group said in a statement Wednesday. The group posted a list of donors who gave to it in 2022 on its website, although it said in the statement it does not “usually” announce donations.

Nonprofits disclose information about who funds them in tax forms submitted to the IRS, which are eventually made public. But the pandemic has contributed to delays in processing forms starting in 2020. Scott’s disclosure of this information about his donations helps increase transparency around his donations.

Mackenzie Scott and Jeff Bezos attend the 2018 Vanity Fair Oscar Party hosted by Radhika Jones at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on March 4, 2018 in Beverly Hills, California. (Getty)
Scott promised to release the donation database in a March 2022 trial, saying the site would not go live until it reflected the preferences of each of these nonprofit teams on how details of their donations are shared.



The Easterseals organization and its affiliates received a $162 million donation from Scott in 2020. The organization said it was not contacted by Scott’s representatives to contribute content to the website, but it submitted detailed reports on their use of funds.

“We remain grateful for Ms. Scott’s generous philanthropy and will continue to impact the lives of people with disabilities, including veterans and the elderly, through her transformational support,” said Sharon Watson of Easterseals per E-mail.

Habitat for Humanity International also said it had not been contacted by Scott’s representatives specifically about the content posted on the website.

mackenzie scott
mackenzie scott (Make a donation)
Scott, whose Forbes net worth is currently estimated at $27 billion ($43 billion), has not given an interview about her donations, opting to discuss her reasons in a handful of essays she has published on Medium and now on Yield Giving.

On the site, Scott writes that she and her team assess organizations by analyzing their “potential for lasting positive impact,” including their finances, history, measurement of results, and whether they have “experienced leadership representative of the community served”.

Scott says the “open call” process she plans to launch will focus on specific types of organizations or certain sites. It plans to post the eligibility and selection criteria, as well as publicly appoint the panel for evaluating applications.

“Will the website be useful? Will expressing things my way (working on every word) lead to misunderstanding? ” she wrote. “Will misunderstanding be a barrier between us? Yes. Sometimes humans misunderstand each other. And yet, over time, each of us can help break down barriers through what we continue to choose to do.

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The Associated Press’s coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits is supported by the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.