NEW YORK — Billionaire creator and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott acknowledged one other $2 billion in donations in a weblog submit on Wednesday, bringing the whole she’s given away since 2019 to $19.2 billion.
She additionally revealed new details about how she was managing her wealth, saying she had directed advisors to speculate her funds into “mission-aligned ventures.” Most of the grants she made in 2024, she mentioned, went to bolstering financial safety and alternatives..
“I’ve requested the funding staff serving to me handle the belongings I’m working to disclose to supply funds and corporations centered on for-profit options to those challenges,” Scott wrote. That is in distinction to “withdrawing funds from a checking account, or from a inventory portfolio that will increase the wealth and affect of leaders who have already got it.”
Most of Scott’s wealth comes from shares of Amazon that she acquired when she divorced the corporate’s founder, Jeff Bezos. Forbes estimates her present wealth to be $31.7 billion, even after making a gift of her cash for 5 years.
Gabrielle Fitzgerald, founder and CEO of The Panorama Group, has researched Scott’s giving and supplied recommendation and assist for nonprofits who’ve acquired Scott’s items. She mentioned she sees a rising focus in Scott’s giving on problems with poverty.
“She is creating a tremendous position mannequin for philanthropists, though I don’t see very many who have adopted her position modeling,” Fitzgerald mentioned. “But it actually exhibits that it’s simple to provide away some huge cash to good teams.”
In asserting the items on her Yield Giving web site, Scott mulled over the that means of “investing,” writing that it “appears to have undergone a form of semantic shriveling. On the checklist of its large, stunning, unique definitions? To dedicate sources for a helpful goal. To endow with rights. To dress.”
Scott, who doesn’t touch upon her giving past the uncommon submit on her web site, has shaken up the nonprofit sector together with her embrace of “trust-based philanthropy,” offering large grants with no strings hooked up to over 2,450 nonprofits.
In 2024, she additionally gave repeat items to a number of organizations — one thing of a brand new improvement in her giving, which has set a excessive bar for a way a lot and how briskly megadonors can provide. Two organizations, CAMFED, which helps ladies schooling in Africa, and Undue Medical Debt, which was previously known as RIP Medical Debt, each obtained third donations from Scott this yr.
Grantees say that when Scott’s staff notifies them of grants they are saying to not anticipate further assist. So it was a shock for Shaun Donovan, CEO of the reasonably priced housing group Enterprise Community Partners, when he obtained the information of a second, main donation.
“I used to be taking my baggage off the safety screener at LaGuardia Airport and my cellphone rang and I used to be informed that MacKenzie Scott was awarding us one other $65 million,” Donovan mentioned in an interview in November.
His group had acquired $50 million from Scott in 2020, making them one of many nonprofits that has acquired probably the most funding from Scott, based mostly on grant knowledge made public on Yield Giving. About 500 organizations haven’t disclosed the quantity of funding they’ve acquired from Scott.
“We weren’t anticipating their second present. Every time they award this funding, they’re very clear that organizations mustn’t anticipate it,” Donovan mentioned, including his recommendation is, “Really deal with it that method. Don’t use it for normal working bills. Don’t use it for issues that may create a cliff or a gap in your funds to your group.”
This yr was already a standout in Scott’s giving as a result of it was the primary time that she awarded grants by way of an utility course of. In March, she introduced the recipients of an “open name” for purposes from nonprofits. She stunned recipients by awarding extra money to extra organizations than she had initially promised, committing $640 million to greater than 360 nonprofits.
In one measure of the demand for the big and unrestricted grants she makes, 6,353 nonprofits utilized by way of the nonprofit Lever for Change, which ran the “open name” for Scott. Ultimately, 279 nonprofits have been awarded $2 million, whereas 82 organizations acquired $1 million every. Previously, organizations have mentioned they’ve responded to questions from an nameless donor who turned out to be Scott or simply acquired an e-mail or chilly name with none utility in any respect.
The incontrovertible fact that her grants are unrestricted, that means that nonprofits can use them nevertheless they wish to additional their charitable goal, is a part of what makes them so precious, Donovan mentioned. Five years into her philanthropic blitz, he mentioned it is now potential to see her affect throughout entire sectors.
“The scale of this giving has actually not simply modified particular person organizations however modified total fields like reasonably priced housing,” he mentioned.
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