MacKenzie Scott Donates $2.7 Billion To Charity

(RTTNews) - MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon. Inc (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos has donated $2.7 billion to 286 "high-impact organizations" as per her blog post on Tuesday. Including this, Scott has donated a total of $8.5 billion since July 2020.

In her post on Medium titled, Seeding by Ceding, Scott started with bashing the wealth gap between the rich and poor across the globe. Scott said, "Me, Dan, a constellation of researchers and administrators and advisors — we are all attempting 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."

The donation was segmented targeting multiple "historically underfunded and overlooked" areas both geographically and in the socio-economic setting. According to her post, the higher education institutions operating in the under-deserved communities, ethnic and religious minorities, and Arts and cultural institutions were the chief focus in their filtration process. The primary focus was given to groups that were working locally, in a racially and sexually diverse ecosystem.

Post her tumultuous divorce with Bezos, Scott was left with 4% in shares in Amazon as she became one of the richest women in the world with a net worth of $59 billion. In 2019, she signed up for the Giving Pledge program to give away half of her wealth to charity. The program, started by Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and his ex-wife Melinda Gates, encourages the ultra-rich to give away a fraction of their wealth to society. Micael Bloomberg, Bill Ackman are among the other big guns who have signed the pledge.

Since July 2020, Scott has donated $1.7 billion in historically African-American institutions and groups while in December 2020, she donated another $4.2 billion to 384 groups. Scott's post reflected sensitivity towards the non-profit organizations that work towards the betterment of society. In 2019, while signing the pledge, Scott had mentioned, "My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful. It will take time and effort and care. But I won't wait. And I will keep at it until the safe is empty."