Mackenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has announced that she has donated $ 4.2 billion in the last four months to hundreds of organizations. This is in line with a promise she made last year. Scott’s fortune is estimated at $ 60.7 billion and she is the richest woman in the world. Her ex-husband is the richest man in the world today and his fortune is estimated at $ 182.2 billion.
Scott announced the donations Tuesday in a post on a psychic website, in which she likened the corona virus to a devastating bullet hitting the lives of Americans. She stressed that the epidemic had particularly exacerbated the plight of underprivileged groups, such as women, blacks and the poor, and “in the meantime,” she added, “the billionaires have continued to get rich.”
Scott is one of those billionaires. Its wealth is based on a 4% stake in Amazon shares, about 19.7 million shares, which it received as part of its divorce agreement from Jeff Bezos. It is ranked 18th in the world and its capital has grown by $ 23.6 billion since the beginning of the year, according to the Bloomberg agency.
As most of the world economy shrank, and closures forced street stores to close until further notice, Amazon expanded as more and more Americans switched to online shopping and the company posted handsome profits in the third quarter of the year.
Scott pledged to donate as part of an initiative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and investor Warren Buffett. She was one of 210 billionaires and millionaires who signed a petition pledging to donate a significant portion of their money during their lifetime. Others were Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, businesswoman Sarah Blakely and Steve and Gene Keys, head of the National Geographic Board of Trustees. Jeff Bezos did not sign the petition.
Not the first donation this year
After already donating $ 1.68 billion to 116 nonprofits, universities, community groups and legal aid organizations in July, she asked her team to “accelerate” giving in 2020 by finding organizations and populations “most severely affected by the corona.” She said the groups were chosen with an information-driven approach, as she tried to focus on organizations that had successful leadership and showed results mostly in communities with poor food security, racial inequality and high poverty, as well as “little access to money coming from philanthropists.”
When Scott’s team members began the survey, there were 6,490 organizations on the list. After careful screening, it was decided that 384 charities and organizations in 50 states, in Puerto Rico and the capital Washington, will together receive a total of $ 4.16 billion in donations, including food depots, emergency aid funds and “aid services for the most severely injured,” Scott said in a statement.
Scott further wrote that she is “far from completing” the commitment and encouraged others to contribute like her in any way they can.
Full disclosure: Due to a clerical error, the wording of the article and the headline initially included a contribution amount of $ 1.4 billion. The amount donated by Kenzie Scott in four months is $ 4.2 billion.