She said Mackenzie Scott She has donated nearly $2 billion to charity over the past seven months in a blog post published shortly after her ex-husband, billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced that he planned to give away the majority of his fortune.
The latest announcement brings Scott’s total donations to more than $14 billion since her divorce from Bezos. The money has made its way to more than 1,500 nonprofit organizations, including “343 organizations that support the voices and opportunities of people from disadvantaged communities,” according to Scott’s Medium blog post.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and several of its local affiliates received the gifts, as well as Girl Scouts of USA and its affiliates, which announced a donation of $84.5 million in October, according to what was reported by “Bloomberg”, and viewed by Al Arabiya.net.
Scott, 52, said in her post that she plans to launch a website with more information about her donation, which is made through donor-advised funds with the help of a team of consultants.
The Scott Foundation is not used, and will be mandated to release more information to the public under Internal Revenue Service rules. Scott’s disclosures are also entirely optional, and in recent posts, she’s revealed a bit about where her donations have gone and the numbers of charities that have received them.
Meanwhile, Bezos, along with partner Lauren Sanchez, revealed in an interview with CNN published Monday that he intends to give away the bulk of his lifetime wealth to fight climate change and support those seeking to heal social and political divides. This is the first time that the founder of Amazon has made such a promise, and it comes years after Scott signed the Giving Pledge, a promise by some of the world’s richest people to donate most of their wealth to charity in their lives of their own will.
Bezos, 58, also announced Saturday that he will be giving Dolly Parton $100 million as the final recipient of the Courage and Civility Award. Last year he sent the award to Chef Jose Andres, whose World Central Kitchen feeds people in disaster areas, and CNN’s Van Jones, founder of Dream.Org.
Bezos’ wealth is estimated at $123.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and Scott’s wealth is $23.8 billion.