MacKenzie Scott announces she donated $2B the same day ex Jeff Bezos reveals he is giving away his wealth
BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA: MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, on Monday, November 14, 2022, revealed that she had donated $2 billion in the last seven months. Earlier, on the same day, Bezos announced that he will give away all of his wealth in his lifetime.
Scott revealed that she has donated "$1,990,800,000 to 343 organizations supporting the voices and opportunities of people from underserved communities," according to a Medium blog post. "The funds we picked look for teams with lived experience in the issues they're addressing, as we did when selecting the other non-profits in this giving cycle, and the 1,200+ recipients before them, many of which are also funds," Scott wrote in her blog, noting that she had had assistance from her team to make the donations. "You can learn more about any of them in the database we’ll be releasing soon, with information supplied by their own teams, and mission statements in their own words," she added.
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According to the Daily Mail, Scott's revelation came at the same time Bezos and his girlfriend Lauren Sánchez stated in an interview with CNN that they were "building the capacity to be able to give away this money." Bezos continued, "The hard part is figuring out how to do it in a levered way."
"Building Amazon was not easy," Bezos said, adding, "It took a lot of hard work and very smart teammates. And I'm finding - and Lauren's finding - that philanthropy is very similar. It's not easy. It's really hard."
The news of Scott's most recent donations also broke out at the same time a New York Times report claimed that Amazon plans to lay off up to 10,000 workers from its human resources department, retail division, and devices organizations.
Scott, who was married to Bezos for 25 years until they announced their divorce in 2019, usually doesn't give interviews or appear publicly. However, she provides updates about her philanthropy work twice a year on her Medium blog. In their divorce settlement, Bezos agreed to give her "a four percent stake in Amazon, valued at $38.3 billion at the time," according to Forbes.
Furthermore, Forbes has also reported that compared to Bezos, who has given more than $2.4 billion to charitable causes over the course of his lifetime, Scott "has given away five times more than him—$12.8 billion—in a little over two years."
