Billionaire Mackenzie Scott Donated Nearly $4 Billion To Nonprofit Organizations
Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott revealed in a blog post that she has donated nearly $4 billion to 465 nonprofits including a $436 million donation to Habitat for Humanity International and 84 of its affiliates to create affordable housing. That donation is the largest publicly disclosed gift from Scott so far. Her policy is to let the organizations she donates to make the announcements in the hopes of minimizing attention. Her recent post confirmed announcements by several organizations.
The announcement brings Scott’s publicly disclosed donations to more than $12 billion since 2019. In total, Scott says she’s donated to 1,257 organizations. Scott, who is worth about $48 billion according to Forbes, signed the Giving Pledge through which many billionaires have promised to donate more than half of their wealth. Scott declines interviews and only discusses her philanthropic choices through her blog posts. Her recent post touched off a wave of nonprofits announcing their plans for the donations.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America and 21 of its affiliates received its largest gift ever from Scott— $275 million. Boys & Girls Clubs of America announced a $281 million donation similarly dispersed among local chapters of the organization. HIAS, the international Jewish humanitarian organization, said Scott donated $10 million to its campaign to raise $40 million for its emergency response in Ukraine. Community Catalyst, a healthcare reform nonprofit in Boston, announced it received $25 million and would use the funds to help “create a health system rooted in race equity and health justice.”
In her blog post, Scott said 60% of the groups she and husband Dan Jewett donated to are led by women and 75% are led by people with lived experience in the regions they support and the issues they seek to address. “Our team’s focus over these last nine months has included some new areas, but as always our aim has been to support the needs of underrepresented people from groups of all kinds. Scott believes in “supporting people directly experiencing inequities is essential, both because it is informed by insights no one else can contribute, and because it seeds power and opportunity within the community itself.”
In the newest blog post, Scott said her team is working on building a website that will include a searchable database of her grants. The expansive list of organizations that received her latest round of donations have a broad range of missions and mandates—from improving women’s health to solving the climate crisis to helping military families, incarcerated people, and teachers.
