Ex-wife Of Amazon Boss Jeff Bezos Donated One Third Of Us Megagift Donations Last Year All On Her Own

MacKenzie Scott, nan ex-wife of Amazon laminitis Jeff Bezos, was responsible for one-third of each U.S. “megagift” donations to charities past year, according to a caller report.

Last year, nan full magnitude of megagifts to kindness — defined arsenic donations that surpass 0.1 percent of full giving successful a twelvemonth — added up to $19.2 billion, according to a caller Fortune report, which cites information from Giving USA and nan Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

Scott’s donations made up astir one-third of that figure, pinch astir $7 cardinal successful megagifts, bringing her five-year full to $26.2 billion, nan study said. Other apical megagift donors included erstwhile New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, investor Warren Buffett and Microsoft laminitis Bill Gates.

"It was a affirmative twelvemonth for charitable giving, pinch virtually each categories of recipient organizations achieving coagulated aliases amended maturation astatine nan aggregate level," Giving USA Foundation Vice Chair Gabe Cooper told Fortune.

Bezos joined Scott successful 1993, a twelvemonth earlier he founded Amazon successful their Bellevue, Washington, garage. The brace met while moving astatine D.E. Shaw, a New York hedge fund. The mates had 3 sons and a girl together earlier they divided successful 2019.

Scott, now 56, has since founded nan kindness Yield Giving, which has donated much than $26 cardinal to 2,700 non-profits.

According to Yield Giving’s website, its apical donations successful 2025 included $60 cardinal for Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, a group that supports cleanable power initiatives; $63 cardinal for Howard University, a historically Black assemblage successful Washington, D.C.; and $90 cardinal for Forests, People, Climate, an anti-deforestation non-profit.

Yield Giving uses “quiet research” to place nan non-profits “working to beforehand nan opportunities of group successful underserved communities,” which includes evaluating nan organizations “as privately and anonymously arsenic we tin successful bid to limit load connected non-profits and debar diverting them from their work,” its website says.

Scott has vowed to proceed giving distant her luck “until nan safe is empty.”

“We each travel by nan gifts we person to connection by an infinite bid of influences and fortunate breaks we tin ne'er afloat understand. In summation to immoderate assets life has nurtured successful me, I person a disproportionate magnitude of money to share. My attack to philanthropy will proceed to beryllium thoughtful. It will return clip and effort and care. But I won’t wait,” she wrote successful 2019.

The Independent has contacted Yield Giving for comment.