MacKenzie Scott is reminding us how the 1% should be spending their money.
Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, announced that she donated about $1.7 billion to multiple organizations related to racial inequality, LGBTQ+ rights, and climate change, among other issues. She posted the announcement on Medium after signing The Giving Pledge, a campaign to encourage billionaires to publicly give away a majority of their wealth to help society’s most pressing issues.
“I began work to complete my pledge with the belief that my life had yielded two assets that could be of particular value to others: the money these systems helped deliver to me, and a conviction that people who have experience with inequities are the ones best equipped to design solutions,” Scott said in her post.
Here’s her donation breakdown:
Racial Equity: $586,700,000
LGBTQ+ Equity: $46,000,000
Gender Equity: $ 33,000,000
Economic Mobility: $399,500,000
Empathy & Bridging Divides: $55,000,000
Functional Democracy: $72,000,000
Public Health: $128,300,000
Global Development: $130,000,000
Climate Change: $125,000,000
The groups she has donated to include the National Urban League, the Transgender Law Center, and multiple historically Black colleges and universities. Scott says she doesn’t plan on stopping here and will continue to donate to more organizations in the future.
So that only leaves one question: Will Jeff Bezos, the richest person in the world, follow her lead?