MacKenzie Scott’s charitable donations for 2025 amounted to $7.17 billion, distributed across approximately 225 organisations, according to her personal blog post. She noted that the total sum “usually makes the news,” but she believes it represents “an infinitesimal part of the daily expressions of care offered in communities.”
With this year’s donations, Scott’s total lifetime philanthropic contribution since 2019 now stands at $26.3 billion, based on her public announcements.
Among the World’s Top Donors
According to Forbes data, MacKenzie Scott now ranks only behind Warren Buffett and Bill Gates in terms of overall lifetime charitable giving. Forbes still estimates her net worth at $29.9 billion.
Scott became one of the wealthiest women in the world following her 2019 divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. That same year, she signed the Giving Pledge, committing to allocate the majority of her wealth to charitable causes during her lifetime.
Where the Donations Went
The 2025 donations went to a wide range of non-profit organisations, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and groups active in the fields of poverty, social inequality, and climate change.
In an earlier post, Scott had explained that she places particular emphasis on organisations operating in communities facing high food insecurity, acute racial inequality, high poverty rates, and limited access to charitable funds.
“Charity Is Not Just the Big Amounts”
In her recent text, Scott sought to place her own giving in a broader context, citing data from Giving USA, which showed that Americans donated over $590 billion in 2024. She stressed that a large part of philanthropy happens on a small scale, often away from the public eye.
She even referred to personal experiences of generosity she had received before acquiring great wealth—from a dentist who offered her free treatment during her student years to a Princeton classmate who lent her money so she would not have to interrupt her studies.
Unconditional Giving
A feature that distinguishes MacKenzie Scott’s philanthropy is that her donations come without conditions, allowing the organisations to use the money as they see fit. She has written that her goal is to “remove her own privileged voice from the forefront” and leave space for those who “fight daily against inequality.”
She has stressed: “The people who create change deserve to be at the centre of the stories,” she has emphasised, “even—and perhaps especially—when their work is funded by great wealth”.
(information from naftemporiki.gr)