Honestly, if you still call her MacKenzie Bezos, you're living in 2019. She dropped the name years ago. Now, she’s MacKenzie Scott, and she is currently pulling off one of the most aggressive, no-strings-attached wealth redistributions in human history.
It’s actually wild to watch.
Most billionaires set up giant foundations with marble lobbies and a hundred gatekeepers. They want their names on buildings. They want to control how every cent is spent. Scott? She basically does the opposite. She finds a non-profit doing good work—like a tiny community college in Alaska or a crisis hotline for kids—and just drops a life-changing check into their bank account. No long applications. No five-year reports. Just here you go, keep doing what you’re doing.
The $26 Billion Disappearing Act
As of early 2026, the numbers are getting hard to wrap your head around. Since her divorce from Jeff Bezos, she has given away over $26.3 billion. Just last year, in 2025, she ramped things up even more, donating $7.1 billion to 186 different organizations.
That is more than some countries spend on education in a year.
And she’s not slowing down. Just yesterday, news broke that she gave $45 million to The Trevor Project. If you haven’t heard of them, they run a suicide prevention hotline for LGBTQ+ youth. They’ve had a brutal year with federal funding cuts, and then suddenly, this check arrives. It was the largest single donation they’ve ever received in 27 years. The CEO, Jaymes Black, literally said they were "speechless."
That’s the "Scott Effect." She finds the people who are struggling the most and provides a parachute.
Where is MacKenzie Scott now?
You won’t find her on a yacht in the Med. You won’t see her at the Met Gala. She’s famously private, living in Seattle and staying completely out of the tabloid cycle. After her brief second marriage to Dan Jewett ended in 2023, she has basically gone "ghost" in the best way possible.
She speaks through her website, Yield Giving.
The name "Yield" is a vibe. It means to give up control. She believes the people actually doing the work—the social workers, the teachers, the activists—know how to spend the money better than she does. It’s a total rejection of the "savior" complex most rich people have.
Breaking Down the 2025-2026 Giving Spree
If you look at where the money went in the last twelve months, a clear pattern emerges. She isn't just throwing darts at a map. She is targeting specific gaps in the American social safety net.
- HBCUs and Tribal Colleges: She gave over $700 million to historically Black colleges and universities last year alone. Howard University got $80 million. Bowie State got $50 million. These schools often have tiny endowments compared to the Ivy Leagues, so these gifts are transformational.
- The Arctic and Indigenous Research: She recently gave $18 million to Alaska Pacific University. This is a tiny school with fewer than 600 students. That one gift nearly doubled their entire endowment.
- Health and Crisis Intervention: Beyond The Trevor Project, she has been pouring money into community health clinics that serve people without insurance.
She’s basically a one-woman government at this point.
The Amazon "Problem"
Here’s the thing: despite giving away billions, her net worth is still around $31.5 billion.
💡 You might also like: J. Edgar Hoover Gay Rumors: What Most People Get Wrong
It’s the paradox of the stock market. She sold about $13 billion worth of Amazon shares in 2025, but because the stock keeps performing, she stays incredibly wealthy. She’s currently the third-wealthiest woman in the United States, yet she’s signed the Giving Pledge, promising to give away the majority of her wealth.
She once wrote that she has "a disproportionate amount of money to share."
She treats her fortune like a burden she’s trying to offload as quickly as possible. Most people in her position are trying to build a legacy. Scott seems to be trying to dismantle hers. She doesn't want the credit; she wants the impact.
Why this matters for the rest of us
You might think, "Cool, a rich lady is giving money away. Why should I care?"
Well, it’s changing how philanthropy works. Usually, when a big donor gives money, they demand a seat on the board. They want to approve the budget. They make the non-profit spend 40 hours a week writing reports to prove they aren't "wasting" the money.
Scott’s "unrestricted" model is a middle finger to that system. She trusts people. By giving money with no strings attached, she allows these organizations to actually innovate. They can hire more staff, fix their leaky roofs, or start new programs that they previously couldn't afford because some other donor only wanted to fund "new" projects.
What most people get wrong about her
There’s this weird narrative that she’s just "the ex-wife."
Let’s be real: she was at Amazon from day one. She was the one driving the car across the country while Jeff wrote the business plan. She was the first accountant. She helped build the engine that created this wealth.
Now, she’s building a new engine.
She is also a novelist—lest we forget. She studied under Toni Morrison at Princeton. Morrison once called her one of the best students she’d ever had. You can see that literary background in her essays on Yield Giving. They aren't corporate press releases; they are thoughtful, sometimes dense, reflections on what it means to be a human being in a broken system.
Actionable Insights: What Can We Learn?
You don't need billions to adopt the MacKenzie Scott mindset. If you’re looking to make an impact in 2026, here’s how to do it "the Scott way":
- Trust the experts. If you donate to a local food bank, don't tell them they can only use it for "canned corn." Give them the money and let them pay their electricity bill.
- Look for the gaps. While everyone else is donating to big-name charities with huge marketing budgets, look for the tiny non-profits in your town that are doing the unglamorous work.
- Check out Yield Giving. If you want to see who is actually doing good work, go to her website. She has a searchable database of every organization she has vetted. It is basically the ultimate "who's who" of high-impact non-profits.
MacKenzie Scott is currently redefining power. In a world where everyone is shouting for attention, she is quietly changing the lives of millions by simply letting go. Whether she manages to reach a net worth of zero remains to be seen, but she is certainly trying her hardest to get there.
If you want to support the causes she’s backing, start by looking into The Trevor Project or your local community college endowment. These are the places where a little bit of support—even if it's not $45 million—goes a long way.