AP
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The writer and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott revealed $7.1 billion in donations to nonprofits in 2025 Tuesday, marking a significant increase in her annual giving from current years.
Writing in an essay on her web site, Scott stated, “This dollar total will likely be reported in the news, but any dollar amount is a vanishingly tiny fraction of the personal expressions of care being shared into communities this year.”
Scott acknowledged donating $2.6 billion in 2024 and $2.1 billion in 2023. The items this 12 months convey her whole giving since 2019 to $26.3 billion.
Scott’s donations have captured the attention of nonprofits and different charitable funders as a result of they arrive with no strings hooked up and are sometimes very massive in contrast to the annual budgets of the recipient organizations. Forbes estimates Scott’s internet price at $33 billion, most of which comes from Amazon shares she acquired after her 2019 divorce from firm founder Jeff Bezos..
With the exception of an open call for applications in 2023, it isn’t doable to apply for her funding nor to attain her immediately, as Scott maintains no public dealing with workplace or basis. Organizations are often notified by way of an middleman that Scott is awarding them a donation with little prelude or warning.
In advance of her announcement on her web site, Yield Giving, greater than a dozen traditionally Black faculties and universities revealed they’d acquired $783 million in donations from Scott to this point this 12 months, in accordance to analysis from Marybeth Gasman, a professor at Rutgers University and skilled on HBCUs.
“One of the things that I really admire about Mackenzie Scott is that she is like an equity machine,” Gasman stated, particularly at a time when efforts to promote equity in education have come underneath assault from the Trump administration. She additionally stated Scott’s items to HBCUs this time are larger than the spherical of donations she made in 2020.
Not all the faculties that beforehand had acquired funding from Scott acquired a present this time and there have been some first-time recipients as nicely. In whole, Gasman has tracked $1.35 billion in donations from Scott to HBCUs since 2020.
In addition, UNCF, which is the most important supplier of scholarships to minority college students, acquired $70 million from Scott, and stated it can make investments the present in a collective endowment it’s constructing for collaborating HBCUs. Another $50 million went to Native Forward Scholars Fund, which had additionally acquired a earlier present from Scott and gives school and graduate scholarships to Native American college students.
Unlike Scott’s items, most foundations or major donors direct grants to particular applications and require an software and updates concerning the influence of the nonprofit’s work. Scott doesn’t ask grantees to report again about how they used the cash.
Research from the Center for Effective Philanthropy in 2023 checked out the impact of Scott’s giving and located few of the recipients have struggled to handle the funds or have seen different funders pullback.
Kim Mazzuca, the CEO of the California-based nonprofit, 10,000 Degrees, stated her group was notified of its first present from Scott of $42 million earlier this 12 months.
“I was just filled with such joy. I was speechless and I kind of stumbled around with my words,” she stated, and requested the particular person calling from Fidelity Charitable to make clear the donation quantity, which is about double their annual funds.
10,000 Degrees gives scholarships, mentoring and different assist to low-income college students and goals to assist them graduate school with out taking over loans. Mazzuca stated that often nonprofits develop solely regularly, however that this present will enable them to attain extra college students, to check some expertise instruments and to begin an endowment.
Mazzuca credited Scott for investing in confirmed options that exist already.
“She comes from a very deep, reflective space, very heartfelt,” Mazzuca stated. “And she’s only providing these financial means as a tool for people to recognize they are who they’ve been waiting for.”
That concept references a prophecy from the Hopi Tribe that ends with the road, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Mazzuca stated she’s drawn on the prophecy for years to empower each her group and the scholars it helps to acknowledge their very own energy to form our world.
In October, Scott posted an essay on her web site underneath that title and sharing the prophecy. The essay, which she expanded upon in December to announce her giving, additionally displays on how acts of generosity and kindness can ripple far afield and into the long run. She cited her personal experiences getting assist whereas in school, together with a dentist who repaired a tooth without cost and her roommate who loaned her $1,000.
Scott now has invested in that same roommate’s company, which provides loans to college students who would in any other case wrestle to get financing from banks. The investments appear to be a part of an effort Scott introduced final 12 months to transfer extra of her cash into “mission aligned” investments, moderately than into automobiles that search solely the very best financial returns.
In her 2025 essay, Scott appeared to urge folks towards motion, writing, “There are many ways to influence how we move through the world, and where we land.”