Her lifetime donations total a staggering $19.25 billion, accounting for 36% of her wealth. Yet, thanks to a surging Amazon, her net worth actually grew by $923 million this year.
MacKenzie Scott has donated $19 billion to different charities and organizations in five years. (Franziska Krug—Getty Images)
NEW YORK — MacKenzie Scott has solidified her reputation as the most aggressive and disruptive philanthropist of the modern era. As of November 2025, the billionaire novelist and ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has donated an eye-popping $19.25 billion since 2020.
Hundreds of millions have been distributed in just the past few months alone. Yet, in a stark illustration of extreme wealth in the 2020s, her fortune has barely registered the impact.
Despite her historic giveaway, Scott remains one of the wealthiest people in the world, with a net worth exceeding $35 billion.
The paradox is a simple, powerful one: she can’t seem to give her money away fast enough. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Scott’s personal fortune has increased by $923 million year-to-date in 2025.
The reason? The relentless engine of Amazon (AMZN) stock.
The Math of a Mega-Fortune
When Scott and Bezos divorced in 2019, she received a 4% stake in Amazon, which amounted to roughly 139 million shares. Since then, she has systematically liquidated her holdings to fund her philanthropy, selling or donating about 58 million shares or 42% of her original stake.
While that 42% stake was worth an estimated $12.6 billion at the time of donation, the value of her remaining shares has continued to soar. Since November 2020, Amazon's stock price has rocketed more than 45%, ensuring that even as billions exit her accounts, billions more flow back in from market gains.
This relentless growth stands in sharp contrast to the philanthropic record of her ex-husband.
Jeff Bezos, worth $264 billion, made headlines in 2020 with a $10 billion pledge to launch the Bezos Earth Fund. However, according to the Forbes "America’s Most Generous Philanthropists" list from April 2025, his total lifetime giving money that has actually been donated, not just parked in a foundation amounts to $4.1 billion.
This accounts for just 1.6% of his net worth. Scott, by the same metric, has already given away 36% of her fortune.
A Strategy: Filling the Voids
Scott's giving, managed through her platform Yield Giving (founded in 2022), is not just notable for its scale but for its targets. Her recent 2025 gifts show a clear focus on education, diversity, and disaster relief—three areas that have seen significant federal funding cuts under the Trump administration.
This has led observers to suggest her philanthropy is intentionally designed to fill the voids left by the White House.
Her latest gifts, many of which are the largest in the recipients' histories, include:
$80 million to Howard University ($63 million for the university and $17 million for its College of Medicine)
$70 million to the United Negro College Fund (UNCF)
$60 million to the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, at a time when the administration has canceled or suspended key disaster mitigation grant programs.
$50 million to Virginia State University (largest gift in its history)
$42 million to Alcorn State University (largest gift in its 154-year history)
$40 million to the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund (double her 2021 donation)
$38 million to Spelman College (largest gift in its history)
"Non-Transactional" Trust
Perhaps most disruptive is Scott's style of giving. She makes "unrestricted" gifts, meaning the organizations receive the money with no strings attached and can choose exactly how to use it.
This "trust-based" model bypasses the lengthy grant applications, reporting requirements, and top-down restrictions of traditional philanthropy.
“Unlike traditional funding processes... her style empowers organizations like ours to determine how best to direct funds quickly and innovatively to address pressing issues,” Noni Ramos, CEO of Housing Trust Silicon Valley, told Fortune in 2024 after receiving a $30 million gift.
In an October 15 post on her Yield Giving site, Scott defended this approach, arguing that America must "recognize and celebrate our role as active participants in the co-creation of our communities."
"The potential of peaceful, non-transactional contribution has long been underestimated... often on the basis that... some of its benefits are hard to track," she wrote. "But what if these imagined liabilities are actually assets? What if these so-called weaknesses foster the strengths upon which the thriving (or even survival) of our civilization depends?”