Known as a secretive philanthropist, the ex-wife of billionaire Jeff Bezos, MacKenzie Scott, recently encountered a “half-laughing, half-crying” situation when her $10 million donation was mistaken for “spam” by the staff of the receiving unit.
With a fortune of more than $37 billion, billionaire MacKenzie Scott once shared that she would do charity work until she was “empty”. After divorcing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Ms. Scott joined the “Giving Pledge”, a campaign co-founded by billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates in 2010 calling on the super-rich to pledge to donate half of their assets to charity.
$10 million mistaken for “spam”Although always focusing on charity activities, Ms. Scott rarely flaunts or publicly announces her donations. For this reason, Ms. MacKenzie Scott’s most recent donation was mistakenly thought to be spam by an employee of the organization receiving the donation.
Specifically, Ms. Scott sent an email to the nonprofit community development organization Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs (ACE) about a donation of up to $10 million. However, according to Ms. Grace Fricks – President of ACE, this sudden email made ACE’s staff mistakenly think it was spam or a scam.
Launched in 2000, ACE is an organization that provides loans and consulting services to new businesses in Georgia, focusing mainly on helping women, people of color and low-income people.
In 2020, Ms. Scott donated $5 million to ACE, and this year, she continued to give the organization an additional $10 million. This amount is said to be the largest gift ACE has ever received to date.
Scott’s $10 million for ACE comes at a time when the nonprofit is in the midst of a campaign to provide $300 million in loans to 1,500 small business owners who don’t have the resources.
“It started out as a dream that ACE wished they had the resources to do. Now it’s a completely different story, with the resources already there, and what we need to do is make it happen in line with our mission,” Fricks said.
The silent billion-dollar valueNot only does Scott have a huge fortune after splitting with billionaire Jeff Bezos, her quiet philanthropy is also something that many people enjoy.
“MacKenzie Scott has raised a whopping $17 billion for more than 2,300 nonprofits globally since 2020. Donations have no specific limit, sometimes reaching seven figures,” said Sara Lomelin, CEO of Philanthropy Together, in an article published on Fortune.
The amount of money Scott has spent on grants is truly impressive. In March 2024, Scott announced that she would give $640 million to 361 small nonprofits. Of those, 279 nonprofits received $2 million and the remaining 82 received $1 million.
Scott’s philanthropic categories often revolve around education, health, economic security and equality. In recent times, her contributions to the real estate sector to help make housing more affordable have also been a matter of particular concern to Ms. Scott.
The most difficult thing to explain about Ms. Scott is that she has never been as flashy as other major philanthropists. In fact, Ms. Scott is so secretive that it is almost impossible to contact her. All attempts by the media to interview Ms. Scott about her donations have been unsuccessful.
Although Ms. Scott’s gifts will certainly have an impact on the beneficiaries, many people believe that Ms. Scott’s constant anonymity may make the donations less transparent, especially when the recipients themselves are not contacted by Ms. Scott to inform them of this “gift from the sky”.