MacKenzie Scott won't say how much she's giving 'this time'

In a blog post titled “No Dollar Signs This Time,” billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott said she won’t reveal how much she has given away to charity since her last round of donations in an effort to draw attention away from herself

Philanthropy MacKenzie Scott (2018 Invision)

In a blog post titled “No Dollar Signs This Time,” billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott said she won’t reveal how much she has given to charity since her last round of donations this year, in an effort to reduce the attention she draws. Instead, she wrote a reflection on what philanthropy means.

“I’m not including here any amounts of money I’ve donated since my prior posts," Scott wrote in the post Wednesday. “I want to let each of these incredible teams speak for themselves first if they choose to, with the hope that when they do, media focuses on their contributions instead of mine.”

Scott's post intentionally offered few details on her giving. “Even by the traditional yardstick — money — contributions to the welfare of others by financially wealthy people don’t merit disproportionate attention,” Scott wrote.

The reclusive novelist, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes at $59 billion, had expressed similar sentiments in her last post in June when she announced that she gave $2.7 billion to charity. She remains a very private person and doesn't make public comments about her giving aside from what she writes on her Medium blog posts.

But her latest comments are likely going to increase calls for more transparency about her giving style. Scott is advised by the nonprofit consulting giant The Bridgespan Group, but little is known about how she selects groups to fund apart from the little she puts on her blog posts every few months. And this time, the public also doesn't know how much she's giving away.

Scott has previously tied her philanthropic motivation, in part, to her concerns about the concentration of vast wealth among a small group of individuals, writing in her last blog post that she, along with her husband, Dan Jewett, and a team of advisors were “attempting to give away a fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change.”

She has promised to give her wealth away “until the safe is empty.” But thanks to Amazon s climbing stock price, it has only grown since she divorced Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2019 and walked away with a 4% stake in the company.

Her giving approach -- which doesn't come with any strings attached — is rare in the philanthropic world, where wealthy donors usually restrict what charities can do with money they give them. Scott doesn’t do that, or require the nonprofits to report to her how they’ve spent the money — a gold standard for gifts. She can also bypass public reporting requirements because she does her giving as an individual, instead of through a foundation like many other wealthy donors.

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