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MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife, donates $2.7 billion

By Shubhangi on Jun 16, 2021 | 04:36 AM IST

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MacKenzie Scott, the billionaire philanthropist and Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday that she has donated $2.7 billion to a variety of charities.

Scott has donated to 286 organizations from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre to racial equity funds in philanthropy and journalism.

Scott has been donating dynamically since the last year giving $8.5 billion from July 2020. Scott remarried to Dan Jewett, a Seattle science teacher.

“Me, Dan, a constellation of researchers and administrators and advisors — we are all attempting to give away a fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change,” Scott wrote in the post.

“We are governed by a humbling belief that it would be better if disproportionate wealth were not concentrated in a small number of hands, and that the solutions are best designed and implemented by others.”

When Scott got divorce from Jeff Bezos, she ended up with a 4 per cent stake in Amazon and is worth almost $60 billion.

Scott has been appreciated by experts for her choice of organizations which are often smaller ones and overlooked by big donors.

“It’s important to note that she has also just written checks to these organizations, leaving her own interests to the side and giving up power to the organizations she’s funding,” said Erik Stegman, executive director of Native Americans in Philanthropy, one of the handful of Native American organizations Scott gave to in this round, reported Bloomberg.

In spite of the praise by critics, a historian of philanthropy and executive director at the Miami Institute for the Social Sciences, Maribel Morey said Scott should be more transparent about how she picks the recipients.

“The public deserves to know how and why certain organizations are getting funding,” Morey said.

Jeff Bezos has also committed to donate $10 billion to combat climate last year of which he has donated $791 million so far.

(With inputs from Bloomberg)

Picture Credits: Bloomberg

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