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MacKenzie Scott's Remarkable Giveaway Is Transforming the Bezos Fortune
As MacKenzie and Jeff Bezos, the couple’s donations were mostly unremarkable. Then came a divorce and her $6 billion gift—a true feat—which upstaged her ex-husband, who has pledged big numbers but has been slower to spend.
Jeff Bezos’ decision on Feb. 2 to step down as chief executive officer of Amazon.com Inc. could shake loose a lot of money. The second-richest person in the world—he’s worth almost $200 billion—says he plans to spend more of his time on philanthropy. If he does so, he’ll be following the model of John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Bill Gates, all of whom got serious about their giving only after they stepped back from their businesses.
Bezos has been a billionaire since the late 1990s, and people have been asking for almost as long how he’d give some of that wealth away. “Long term, I have a responsibility to be a philanthropist,” he said on the Charlie Rose show in 2000. “Assuming we can make Amazon.com a lasting company, which we’re not done with yet.” He was in no hurry: His first public gift wasn’t until 2011, at which point he opened a trickle of philanthropy from what was starting to look like a bottomless fortune.
Now about $7.2 billion of the Amazon fortune has been given away, but the largest chunk of that has come from Bezos’ ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott. Since their divorce in 2019, she’s become one of the most consequential philanthropists of her generation. Scott, who now controls one-quarter of the former couple’s combined wealth of more than $250 billion, gave away almost $6 billion last year to working charities—organizations that do good on a daily basis, rather than just steward philanthropic money.
That’s probably a record annual distribution for a living person, says Melissa Berman of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. As notable as the size of that pile was where it went: to small charities and institutions such as historically Black colleges that are often passed over by big givers.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2021-bezos-scott-philanthropy/
Jeff Bezos’ decision on Feb. 2 to step down as chief executive officer of Amazon.com Inc. could shake loose a lot of money. The second-richest person in the world—he’s worth almost $200 billion—says he plans to spend more of his time on philanthropy. If he does so, he’ll be following the model of John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Bill Gates, all of whom got serious about their giving only after they stepped back from their businesses.
Bezos has been a billionaire since the late 1990s, and people have been asking for almost as long how he’d give some of that wealth away. “Long term, I have a responsibility to be a philanthropist,” he said on the Charlie Rose show in 2000. “Assuming we can make Amazon.com a lasting company, which we’re not done with yet.” He was in no hurry: His first public gift wasn’t until 2011, at which point he opened a trickle of philanthropy from what was starting to look like a bottomless fortune.
Now about $7.2 billion of the Amazon fortune has been given away, but the largest chunk of that has come from Bezos’ ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott. Since their divorce in 2019, she’s become one of the most consequential philanthropists of her generation. Scott, who now controls one-quarter of the former couple’s combined wealth of more than $250 billion, gave away almost $6 billion last year to working charities—organizations that do good on a daily basis, rather than just steward philanthropic money.
That’s probably a record annual distribution for a living person, says Melissa Berman of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. As notable as the size of that pile was where it went: to small charities and institutions such as historically Black colleges that are often passed over by big givers.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2021-bezos-scott-philanthropy/
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