MacKenzie Scott keeps on giving.
The billionaire Seattle philanthropist and author announced another round of significant charitable donations on Wednesday totaling $3.8 billion in support of 465 nonprofit organizations.
In a new Medium post titled “Helping any of us can help us all,” Scott wrote that her team’s focus in giving over the past nine months, since a previous $2.74 billion announcement in June 2021, has been “to support the needs of underrepresented people from groups of all kinds. The cause of equity has no sides.”
Seattle-based Landesa, which helps people secure rights to land, was among the groups receiving funds from Scott, announcing a $20 million gift.
Landesa says that nearly 2.5 billion people around the world rely on land for their livelihoods, and yet many do not have secure rights to their land necessary to thrive.
“This generous gift allows us to scale our work in land rights, which is at the intersection of the most pressing global challenges: the fight against climate change, advancing gender equality, alleviating poverty, and securing peace between communities,” Landesa President and CEO Chris Jochnick said in a news release.
Scott is worth about $53 billion according to Forbes and since signing The Giving Pledge in 2019 she has given more than $12 billion to nonprofits and other organizations. Scott became one of the richest women in the world following her divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Scott said in December that she was more interested in getting at the true meaning of philanthropy rather than making headlines with dollar signs. She said she was leaving it to organizations to call attention to themselves and any amount they received.
Some have done just that, including Habitat for Humanity, which announced on Tuesday that it was receiving $436 million from Scott. Last week, Scott donated $281 million to Boys & Girls Clubs of America and 62 local Boys & Girls Clubs around the country, the nonprofit announced. In February, she gave $50 million to National 4H council to aid youth-focused programs.
