How MacKenzie Scott Gave Away Nearly $6 Billion In A Year Yet Got Richer | Forbes

The former wife of Jeff Bezos is working on giving away most of her fortune. But rising Amazon stock means she has a whole lot more to give away. MacKenzie Scott first landed on Forbes’ list of the World’s Billionaires a year ago, with a $36 billion fortune made up of shares in Amazon that she received in her mid-2019 divorce from Jeff Bezos. Now she’s worth $53 billion—almost 50% more than a year ago.

Scott’s donations have helped 500 organizations across the U.S., including Puerto Rico, from historically Black colleges and universities to the national food bank nonprofit Feeding America. “This pandemic has been a wrecking ball in the lives of Americans already struggling,” she wrote on Medium in December as part of her announcement that she gave nearly $4.2 billion to 384 organizations over four months: “Economic losses and health outcomes alike have been worse for women, for people of color and for people living in poverty. Meanwhile, [the pandemic] has substantially increased the wealth of billionaires.”

Scott wrote that after her first major giving drive in July 2020, she asked her advisors to accelerate her philanthropy to help people suffering from the pandemic. She wanted to give “special attention to those operating in communities facing high projected food insecurity, high measures of racial inequity, high local poverty rates and low access to philanthropic capital.”

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