Jeff Bezos‘ ex-wife has donated $19 billion of her $35.6 billion fortune in “unrestricted” donations following the hefty divorce settlement that she agreed to five years ago.
MacKenzie Scott’s seismic support to over 2,000 organizations, over the last five years has amounted to a staggering $19,250,000,000, according to a report from The Center for Effective Philanthropy and her website Yield Giving.
She and Bezos first met in 1992, when they were both working for New York hedge fund D.E. Shaw. They married a year later and in 1994, quit their jobs to move to Seattle to set up an online bookseller from their garage – a venture that became the genesis of Amazon.
In Forbes, Scott is listed as having a net worth of $32 billion making her the fifth richest woman in the world. The pair had been married for 25 years until they announced their shocking split in 2019 after which Bezos began dating Lauren Sanchez.
At the time, Bezos handed Scott a 4% stake in Amazon, transferring a total of $38 billion in shares into her name. From the onset, the 54-year-old asserted that she had “a disproportionate amount of money to share” and pledged to work hard at donating it “until the safe is empty”, according to a report from The Guardian from 2019.
Scott has supported over 2,450 nonprofit groups from East Texas to northern Tanzania that focus on the arts, affordable housing, education, public health, immigration, and diversity.
A full list of her donations is documented on her site Yield.
“I needn’t ask those I care about what to say to them, or what to do for them. I can share what I have with them to stand behind them as they speak and act for themselves,” said the billionaire in the CEP report.
The CEP said that Scott had “transformed recipient organizations and influenced many of the communities these organizations serve” – a meteoric effort that was primarily aimed at supporting “the needs of underrepresented people from groups of all kinds.”
Meanwhile, her ex-husband, who is also the owner of The Washington Post has been widely criticized in recent weeks as he joined the other giants of Silicon Valley in attending Donald Trump’s inauguration.
In December 2024, Amazon revealed it was donating $1 million to the Trump inauguration fund just hours after Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said it had donated $1 million to the presidential pot.
Bezos and Sanchez, were pictured alongside the likes of Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai at Trump’s inauguration on January 20.
When the pair’s pricey divorce was finalized in 2019, Bezos praised his wife’s commitments to philanthropy, stating: “MacKenzie is going to be amazing and thoughtful and effective at philanthropy, and I’m proud of her. Her letter is so beautiful. Go get ‘em, MacKenzie.”
Scott has also fought hard to propel “The Giving Pledge” – a philanthropic initiative created by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, to encourage the world’s richest people to commit to giving away 50 percent of their wealth to charity. Bezos has never signed up to the pledge.
CEP Research vice president Elisha Smith Arrillaga commented on Scott’s February announcement: “There is much to learn from the experiences of nonprofits who received grants using Scott’s approach.
“These organizations have managed large gifts in strategic ways that have impacted thousands of lives – whether doubling or tripling the number of individuals receiving food from food banks or increasing the number of houses being built in towns across the country, or countless other examples.
“Investing in organizations and leaders that are doing amazing work can have huge impacts on communities.”
The Independent contacted MacKenzie Scott’s representatives for comment.
