When Mackenzie Scott divorced Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame, she received a 4% stake in the company, which was worth $38 million at the time. She found that amount to not be absurd, but far more than one woman could ever need, so she signed a pledge.
Called the Giving Pledge, she promised to give away most of her fortune throughout her lifetime, and is well on track to doing so.
She recently announced that, since June of 2021, she's donated another $3.86 billion of her wealth to 465 nonprofits. This act aligns with the goal she'd made during her split with Bezos in which she promised to donate most of her wealth away.
She's donated to organizations that have to do with housing, youth programs, Ukraine relief efforts, adoption programs, disease research, and much more.
Some of the individual organizations include multiple chapters of the Boys & Girls Club, Communities In Schools, Habitat for Humanity, and Planned Parenthood.
In a blog post Scott wrote about the matter, she said that approximately 60% of the organizations she's donated to are led by women, while 75% are led by "people with lived experience in the regions they support and the issues they seek to address."
"The leadership of people directly experiencing inequities is essential, both because it is informed by insights no one else can contribute, and because it seeds power and opportunity within the community itself."
As she wrote, "Our team's focus over these last nine months has included some new areas, but as always our aim has been to support the needs of underrepresented people from groups of all kinds. The cause of equity has no sides."
She's obviously using her wealth for good, helping thousands of people in the process, but her actions really shine a light on the behavior of other billionaires and how they have the opportunities to do more to help, but seemingly choose not to. At least, not like Mackenzie Scott is doing it.
As explained in the Tweet above, rich people are only getting richer, to the point where they can't seem to give away money fast enough for it to be a loss. If this is the case, why doesn't every billionaire donate the way Scott does, often and in huge amounts?
Scott has now made 1,257 charitable donations since 2019, when she signed a pledge committing to donating most of her wealth during her lifetime or in her will. Of course, she chose the former and has now donated $12.5 billion in total.
h/t: Insider
