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If you had billions of dollars, what would you do with it? What percentage would you be willing to give away or envision yourself donating to charity?
If you’re MacKenzie Scott, then the answer would be “all of it.”
Who is MacKenzie Scott?
Hardly anyone else in the world is as rich as MacKenzie Scott, whose 2019 divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos resulted in her gaining possession of about four percent of Amazon’s stock. In early November of 2024, she announced that she had sold a substantial new portion of her shares in Amazon, enabling her to donate over $8 billion to nonprofit organizations.
This is far from the first time MacKenzie has transmuted Amazon stock into greenbacks for good, however. This recent bout of charitable giving brings her total up to approximately $17.3 billion. According to Forbes, this remarkable track record puts her among the top five most generous donors alive.
So far, Scott has dispensed with two-thirds of the 400 million shares she has owned since 2019, and she might not be done yet. Indeed, she has repeatedly stated for the record that she does not intend to stop giving her money away “until the safe is empty.”
According to Dr. Mona Jhaveri, founder of 501(c)(3) cancer-fighting charity Music Beats Cancer, Scott’s style of giving is unique in many ways.
A Unique approach to charitable giving
“Scott gives to a wide range of causes,” Dr. Jhaveri observes. “In particular, her donations have gone to organizations that support underserved communities, such as nonprofits related to affordable housing, public health, health care, human services, workforce development, economic development, financial inclusion, and education. She also has a reputation for donating to organizations in the arts.”
Importantly, Scott provides unrestricted grants to nonprofits, which is unusual. “This allows the non-profit to spend funds received from those grants on administration and overhead, which most donors do not appreciate,” Jhaveri explains.
So, how does Scott decide which charities to donate to?
“Scott employs a team to find nonprofits that fit her giving criteria,” Dr. Jhaveri says. “In my experience, most donors don’t have this level of support. They normally give to nonprofits that they hear about from their network, where trust and credibility are already established.”
Indeed, in December 2022, Scott wrote on her website, Yield Giving, that she relies on “information from other people — other givers, my team, [and] the non-profit teams.” The website also explains that she and her team do “quiet research” to identify charities with the potential to make a “sustained positive impact.”
Most likely, Scott’s priorities ultimately derive from formative experiences in her own background, as well as her worldview and values. “For most donors, philanthropy is very personal and is oftentimes an extension of their own meaningful experiences,” Dr. Jhaveri explains.
According to Dr. Jhaveri, another unique aspect of Scott’s giving is that it’s mostly unsolicited. Since many of the nonprofits to which Scott bestows her wealth haven’t applied for a grant, they’re usually surprised when they get the phone call announcing the gift — sometimes even believing it to be a hoax or spam.
The future of Scott’s giving
While Scott has sold more shares than her charitable giving represents — $20 billion more — she may have kept these donations secret at the organization’s request or otherwise put the money in donor-advised funds that will be distributed to charity in the future.
“I think it’s likely that the profits from shares [Scott has] offloaded have or will go to nonprofits her team has vetted and deemed worthy of support,” Dr. Jhaveri says. “Scott has been clear about her intentions. I believe she will continue this trend of giving from her remaining wealth.”
Scott often prefers to direct attention toward the nonprofits themselves rather than talking about herself and her motives for giving. Yet she has shared her philosophy of giving in her “Giving Pledge.”
“Tremendous value comes when people act quickly on the impulse to give,” she writes. “There are lots of resources each of us can pull from our safes to share with others — time, attention, knowledge, patience, creativity, talent, effort, humor, compassion. And sure enough, something greater rises up every time we give: the easy breathing of a friend we sit with when we had other plans, the relief on our child’s face when we share the story of our own mistake, laughter at the well-timed joke we tell to someone who is crying, the excitement of the kids in the school we send books to, [and] the safety of the families who sleep in the shelters we fund.”
Scott uses the metaphor of ripples spreading through the water to describe how an initial gift can expand into an even greater good. “These immediate results are only the beginning,” she writes. “Their value keeps multiplying and spreading in ways we may never know.”
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