NEW YORK (AP) — Billionaire writer and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott acknowledged one other $2 billion in donations in a weblog submit on Wednesday, bringing the full 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 take a position her funds into “mission-aligned ventures.” Most of the grants she made in 2024, she stated, went to bolstering financial safety and alternatives..
“I’ve requested the funding crew serving to me handle the belongings I’m working to divulge to supply funds and corporations targeted 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 obtained when she divorced the corporate’s founder, Jeff Bezos. Forbes estimates her present wealth to be $31.7 billion, even after freely giving her cash for 5 years.
Gabrielle Fitzgerald, founder and CEO of The Panorama Group, has researched Scott’s giving and supplied recommendation and help for nonprofits who’ve obtained Scott’s items. She stated she sees a rising focus in Scott’s giving on problems with poverty.
“She is creating an incredible position mannequin for philanthropists, though I don’t see very many who have adopted her position modeling,” Fitzgerald stated. “But it actually reveals that it’s simple to present 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 sort of semantic shriveling. On the listing of its huge, lovely, authentic definitions? To commit sources for a helpful function. 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 huge grants with no strings connected to over 2,450 nonprofits.
In 2024, she additionally gave repeat items to a number of organizations — one thing of a brand new growth in her giving, which has set a excessive bar for how a lot and how briskly megadonors can provide. Two organizations, CAMFED, which helps ladies schooling in Africa, and Undue Medical Debt, which was previously referred to as RIP Medical Debt, each obtained third donations from Scott this 12 months.
Grantees say that when Scott’s crew notifies them of grants they are saying to not anticipate further help. So it was a shock for Shaun Donovan, CEO of the inexpensive 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 telephone rang and I used to be advised that MacKenzie Scott was awarding us one other $65 million,” Donovan stated in an interview in November.
His group had obtained $50 million from Scott in 2020, making them one of many nonprofits that has obtained probably the most funding from Scott, based mostly on grant information made public on Yield Giving. About 500 organizations haven’t disclosed the quantity of funding they’ve obtained 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 stated, 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 can create a cliff or a gap in your price range on your group.”
This 12 months was already a standout in Scott’s giving as a result of it was the primary time that she awarded grants by an utility course of. In March, she introduced the recipients of an “open name” for functions from nonprofits. She stunned recipients by awarding more cash to extra organizations than she had initially promised, committing $640 million to greater than 360 nonprofits.
In one measure of the demand for the massive and unrestricted grants she makes, 6,353 nonprofits utilized by the nonprofit Lever for Change, which ran the “open name” for Scott. Ultimately, 279 nonprofits have been awarded $2 million, whereas 82 organizations obtained $1 million every. Previously, organizations have stated they’ve responded to questions from an nameless donor who turned out to be Scott or simply obtained an e mail or chilly name with none utility in any respect.
The indisputable fact that her grants are unrestricted, that means that nonprofits can use them nevertheless they need to additional their charitable function, is a part of what makes them so helpful, Donovan stated. Five years into her philanthropic blitz, he stated it’s now attainable to see her influence throughout complete sectors.
“The scale of this giving has actually not simply modified particular person organizations however modified whole fields like inexpensive housing,” he stated.
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Associated Press protection of philanthropy and nonprofits receives help by the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely chargeable for this content material. For all of AP’s philanthropy protection, go to https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
