The soaring stock price has allowed her to give back in a big way
Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife MacKenzie Scott has been using her Amazon-bound fortune for good, after selling off billions in shares to give to countless charities and nonprofits.
MacKenzie Scott became the third wealthiest woman in the entire world following her divorce from Jeff Bezos in 2019, earning stocks worth around $35.6 billion because of her contributions to Amazon from the very beginning.
Unlike Bezos however, who frequently appears atop the list of the richest individuals in the world, Scott has vowed to give away most of her fortune, helping those in need with extremely generous donations.
MacKenzie Scott has donated much of her post-divorce fortune to charity (Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)
She has just recently sold another $8 billion worth of Amazon shares in order to fund her charitable ventures, which equates to around 11% of her overall total.
As reported by Yahoo! Finance, Scott has sold or donated 255 million Amazon shares – around $37 billion in current value – since divorcing Bezos, with almost all of it going to various charities and nonprofit organizations.
It is recorded that her charitable donations exceed $17 billion across over 2,300 nonprofits, which brings her towards the top of the list when it comes to charitable individuals in the US – one could argue the inverse of Bezos who has increased his own fortune.
While Amazon’s current executive chairman has invested his fair share into different companies, including some that are researching life-extending drugs, Scott’s interests lie in those that help the many, and she often stipulates that there are no conditions for companies receiving her donations.
She has also donated to a wide range of different organizations, including abortion pill delivery services, relief for rural communities, the Howard University College of Medicine, and the Asian-American Journalists Association.
Scott has targeted a wide range of charities with multi-million dollar donations (Jorg Carstensen/dpa/AFP via Getty Images)
She has even gone as far to donate her own mansions to charity, giving away her two Beverly Hills domiciles in a fortune that soars beyond $55 million.
While Scott’s single donation numbers are comparatively small when placed next to some other billionaires, often not exceeding the $10 million mark according to Benzinga, the significantly wide-scale nature of her actions more than makes up for the ‘lower’ monetary values.
Some have even stated that Scott’s donations have emboldened companies in the eyes of other philanthropists, opening them up for further donations beyond her initial actions.
While Bezos remains seemingly happy post-divorce, having now become engaged to his fiancé Lauren Sánchez, it is hard to ignore the disparity between the pair’s actions with their post-break-up fortunes.
Featured Image Credit: Jerod Harris / Stringer / Taylor Hill / Contributor / Getty
