MacKenzie Scott is Jeff Bezos' widow.
When the couple separated, the moment was the most expensive divorce of all time, knowing that Bezos was, and still is the richest man on Earth.
The divorce was finalized on April 4th, 2019, with MacKenzie getting 25 percent of the couple's joint Amazon stock worth $35.6 billion, while Bezos keeping 75 percent, “to support his continued contributions with the teams of these incredible companies,” said MacKenzie at the time.
And with the huge fortune, in 2020, she is giving it away at an an unprecedented pace, donating more than $4 billion in just four months, following her previous $1.7 billion in gifts back in July.
But knowing that Amazon is one of the few companies that benefitted from the 'COVID-19' coronavirus pandemic, MacKenzie saw her fortune to at least doubled she had when she divorced Bezos.
As one of the richest woman in the world, she said that she asked her team to figure out how to give away her fortune faster.
In a Medium blog post, MacKenzie highlighted her "384 Ways to Help":
"It would be easy for all the people who drew the long demographic straws in this crisis to hole up at home feeling a mix of gratitude and guilt, and wait for it to be over — but that’s not what’s happening. The proliferation of community fridges, COVID relief funds, impromptu person-to-person Venmo gifts, viral debt relief campaigns, and mutual aid initiatives has been swift and uplifting."
And this is where, according to MacKenzie's post, her advisors noted 384 groups to receive gifts, after considering almost 6,500 candidates.
Donations were focused on those “operating in communities facing high projected food insecurity, high measures of racial inequity, high local poverty rates, and low access to philanthropic capital.”
Recipients include more than 30 institutions of higher education, including several tribal colleges and historically Black colleges and universities. More than 40 food banks received her donations, as did almost four dozen local affiliates of Goodwill Industries International.
With MacKenzie's gifts this 2020 quickly approaching $6 billion, she said that she is "far from completing" her pledge.
She “has to be one of the biggest annual distributions by a living individual” to working charities, according to Melissa Berman, CEO of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.
Berman said it’s possible to give large amounts quickly without requiring nonprofits to “jump through a lot of hoops to get the money.” And MacKenzie's huge donations show just that.
The size of her donations disprove a common theory that’s it’s hard for anyone to spend vast amounts of cash without running into trouble or proving wasteful.
In the blog post, MacKenzie listed the names of the groups and organizations that received the money, just as she did for the 116 organizations in her July letter.
Philanthropy experts praised MacKenzie's work, not only for how fast she’s giving away her fortune, but also how she’s gone about it.
Besides donating to organizations in needs, MacKenzie also signed the Giving Pledge in 2019, promising to give away the majority of her fortune.
“I have a disproportionate amount of money to share,” she wrote in her pledge. “My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful. It will take time and effort and care. But I won’t wait. And I will keep at it until the safe is empty.”
