MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has donated billions to causes dealing with “race and ethnicity” through her philanthropic organization since 2020.
Scott and Bezos finalized their divorce in April 2019 after Bezos’ affair with a newscaster was made public, granting her roughly $35.6 billion in Amazon stock. Scott has used her massive financial windfall to pump billions of dollars into left-of-center nonprofits, including $4.8 billion into groups that work in the areas of “race and ethnicity” since 2020, according to a grant database maintained by her philanthropic organization.
Scott has donated $272 million to groups focused on race and ethnicity in just the first three months of 2024, according to her organization, Yield Giving.
Scott wrote in 2019 that she has a “disproportionate amount of money to share” and that she does not intend to stop giving “until the safe is empty.” Since then, “race and ethnicity” have been a major focus of Scott’s charitable giving.
Roughly 40% of the more than $12.5 billion in grants Scott has disclosed went to causes with a focus on racial or ethnic issues, according to Yield Giving.
Examples of Scott’s recent giving in the areas of race and ethnicity include $2 million to an organization that seeks to make ballet dancing more racially diverse, $2 million to a group that helps minority women run for office in order to create “a country with women as the majority of office holders at every level of government, forging the democracy we deserve,” and another $2 million to a group called “Hack the Hood” which teaches “Black, Latinx, Indigenous and AAPI youth” how to get jobs in tech, according to Yield Giving.
Race isn’t the only area where Scott has provided considerable support to left-of-center nonprofits.
Scott gave over $268 million to Planned Parenthood chapters across the nation in 2022, per Yield Giving’s database.
Revenue for abortion advocacy groups, largely funded by philanthropists like Scott, spiked after an unknown source leaked the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and effectively return abortion law to the state level, in May 2022.
Scott’s ability to give to left-of-center nonprofits is pegged to the value of Amazon, given that the vast majority of her wealth comes from her stake in the corporation.
Amazon was worth about $90 a share in April 2019, when Scott finalized her divorce, and is currently worth about $180 a share, according to Yahoo Finance.
Yield Giving does not “participate in events or media stories,” according to its website, and as such could not be reached for comment by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Robert Schmad on March 22, 2024
