: MacKenzie Scott has given away more than $12 billion since her divorce from Jeff Bezos — and 60% of her most recent gifts went to women-led groups

United States

MacKenzie Scott’s latest round of charitable giving brings the total she’s donated since her divorce from Jeff Bezos to more than $ 12 billion.

Scott announced her most recent gifts in a Medium post listing “465 non-profits converting $ 3,863,125,000 into meaningful services for others.”

That $ 3.86 billion represents her giving since June 2021, which comes on top of the nearly $ 9 billion she handed out in the two years prior.

In Scott’s latest set of donations, 60% of the recipient organizations were led by women, she wrote, noting that only a “tiny fraction” of global humanitarian assistance goes to “organizations focused on the disproportionate challenges experienced by women and girls.”

In the U.S., less than 2% of charitable giving goes to groups directly serving women and girls, according to research by Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

The latest list of Scott’s recipients includes the home-building organization Habitat for Humanity, which received $ 436 million; several regional branches of the women’s health group Planned Parenthood; agricultural education group the National 4-H Council; several chapters of Boys & Girls Clubs throughout the U.S.; several groups providing relief for Ukraine; several branches of the dropout prevention group Communities in Schools, and others. 

“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 wrote.

Scott finalized her split from Amazon AMZN, -0.12% founder Jeff Bezos in 2019, and she then became the world’s fourth wealthiest woman when she left the marriage with a 4% ownership stake in Amazon. That same year, along with her new husband Dan Jewett, Scott signed the Giving Pledge, a public promise to give away most of her wealth either in her lifetime or in her will. 

She quickly started deploying her fortune in charitable gifts, and meanwhile her net worth has swelled to an estimated $ 49 billion, according to Forbes.

Amazon shares are down 2.7% so far this year, compared to a 4.8% decline for the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.90% and a 5.76% drop for the S&P 500 Index SPX, +1.19%.