MacKenzie Scott is a novelist who has written a couple books you have never heard of. And she’s worth an estimated $56 billion.
Did we mention she was once married to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos? He just happens to be the world’s richest person, and when the two divorced last year, Scott suddenly became the 18th wealthiest in the world.
Now, just so you can envision that kind of money, it looks like this: $56,000,000,000. Another way to put it is that Scott has 56,000 million. And another way to think about that staggering amount of money is to know that if she were to give away a million dollars, she’d still have 99.998% of her nest egg.
But Scott isn’t giving away a million dollars, she’s giving away billions — in fact, a billion per month for the last four months.
Last Tuesday, Scott revealed that she was “behind the donations to dozens of colleges and universities in the US, part of nearly $4.2 billion she had given to 384 organizations in the last four months,” ScreenShot.com reported.
“According to The New York Times, Scott made donations to colleges and universities that many people have never heard of, and that tended to serve regional, minority and lower-income students. The money came after weeks of secret conversations between Scott’s representatives and college presidents who were interviewed about their missions, as several of the presidents revealed on Wednesday,” the site reported.
Scott has given huge cash gifts to more than a dozen historically black colleges and universities, along with community and technical colleges and schools that serve Native Americans and women.
The Borough of Manhattan Community College, a black and Hispanic school in Manhattan, received $30 million, as did another New York City school, Lehman College. Baltimore’s Morgan State University, another black university, got $40 million, and West Kentucky Community and Technical College in Paducah got $15 million. Scott has reportedly put no restrictions on how the money is spent.
“This pandemic has been a wrecking ball in the lives of Americans already struggling,” Scott wrote in a post on Medium announcing the donations. “Economic losses and health outcomes alike have been worse for women, for people of color, and for people living in poverty. Meanwhile, it has substantially increased the wealth of billionaires.”
“I asked a team of advisors to help me accelerate my 2020 giving through immediate support to people suffering the economic effects of the crisis. They took a data-driven approach to identifying organizations with strong leadership teams and results, with special attention to those operating in communities facing high projected food insecurity, high measures of racial inequity, high local poverty rates, and low access to philanthropic capital,” she wrote.
“The result over the last four months has been $4,158,500,000 in gifts to 384 organizations across all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington D.C. Some are filling basic needs: food banks, emergency relief funds, and support services for those most vulnerable. Others are addressing long-term systemic inequities that have been deepened by the crisis: debt relief, employment training, credit and financial services for under-resourced communities, education for historically marginalized and underserved people, civil rights advocacy groups, and legal defense funds that take on institutional discrimination,” Scott wrote.
Related: Jeff Bezos Donated $98.5 Million To Help The Homeless. It Wasn’t Enough For Leftists.