One of the biggest philanthropists in the US, MacKenzie Scott, is dedicated to solving housing problems. The ex-wife of one of the richest people in the world, Jeff Bezos, can now compete with investment magnate Warren Buffett in philanthropy.
When Shaun Donovan was collecting his bags from security at LaGuardia Airport in October, he picked up the phone even though he didn’t know the number.
The person on the other end of the call told him that his affordable housing nonprofit, Enterprise Community Partners, had just raised $65 million from billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. It was a huge surprise.
Yes, they already received a donation of fifty million dollars from her in 2020, which was also a surprise, but there was no indication that the nonprofit organization would receive any more donations.
“One of the remarkable things about her philanthropy is that she doesn’t share insight into her process and criteria,” says Donovan. Enterprise MacKenzie Scott didn’t apply for more funding, although it sent her team annual reports for three years after the first grant.
Donovan says of the new funding, “We believe it’s a vote of confidence in the work we did with the original $50 million. It’s also a recognition that affordable housing has become a top domestic policy issue in many ways.”
Figures for 2024
Enterprise Community Partners wasn’t the only group to receive a second grant from Scott in 2024. Some of its other donations that year were recurring, a departure from its previous giving strategy.
Other double recipients include the Corporation for Supportive Housing, which received a $40 million grant, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, a nonprofit that also works on affordable housing ($65 million grant), the Nonprofit Finance Fund, which lends money and offers counseling ($22 million grant), and Undue Medical Debt, which works on eliminating medical debt, received $30 million after a $50 million grant in 2022.
Scott has given $2 billion in gifts to 199 organizations in 2024, she announced in her annual post on the Yield Giving website on Wednesday, Dec. 18. Her total lifetime giving has climbed to $19.3 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
Scott wrote that 75 percent of the donations went to «nonprofit organizations promoting economic security and opportunity for people by improving access to affordable housing, jobs, education, healthcare, low-interest loans and more.»
What are his plans for the future?
Scott also highlighted a new initiative she’s working on. She’s asked her team to help find profitable solutions to some of the challenges she’s addressing, including affordable housing and digital platforms focused on women’s health.
It also warned large financial institutions that it might not keep all of its assets in them in the long term.
“When I give, instead of taking funds from a bank account or a stock portfolio that increases the wealth and influence of leaders who already have it, I would like to take them from a portfolio of investments in businesses that are focused on a specific mission or from generally underserved groups like women and racial minorities,” Scott wrote.
In this way, Scott continued in her essay, it would solve two problems at once – first, it would support the economic mobility of the groups in question, and then it would provide funding to experienced teams of nonprofit organizations that are trying to care for people and make changes.
She is known for her rapid pace of giving. In the five years since her divorce from Jeff Bezos in 2019, when she acquired a 4% stake in Amazon, she has sold or donated 255 million shares. Assuming she converted almost all of those Amazon shares into charitable giving, she still has an estimated net worth of $31.8 billion.
If she had kept her entire stake, she would have been among the twenty richest people in the world, worth almost $87 billion.
Her approach to giving is unique among the ultra-rich. Scott is known for giving grants to local organizations without any strings attached, which are usually unsolicited.
One exception was the $640 million it awarded to 361 organizations in March as part of its Open Call in partnership with Lever for Change, a nonprofit that seeks to help shift billionaire donations from alma maters and medical centers to global grassroots organizations.
MacKenzie Scott’s philanthropy has been directed primarily to organizations that seek to address racial, economic, gender, and other inequalities.
