Thread by @notcomplex_

Mackenzie Scott has donated over 17.3 billion dollars of her and Bezos' divorce settlement. She just released a 2024 update.

So, where is the money going?

Top focus area: Race and ethnicity (39%)
Bottom focus area: Art (1-2%)

Here's the giving by focus area:

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First, she got her wealth in early 2019 after her and Bezos' divorce. The value fluctuates with the stock price of Amazon, she, even now is worth more than 30 billion. (Forbes)

Here's the amount she has given for each year:

And here is the number of Organizations by year:

Some orgs get more money than others. The average donation is a bit over 7 million with the median at 400,000.

It's a Pareto distribution, already large orgs are getting the bulk of the money.

So who are these top orgs? At the top of the list, there are mostly universities / HBCUs with the top org being the Co-Impact Gender Fund, an org focused on women's education in the third world.

From my first chart, the amount per Focus Area excludes orgs without a donation amount given. Here are the raw numbers overall including the orgs for which the donation amount was not reported.

So what's her process? She lays out a few steps, including:

* Conduct quiet research to identify candidate organizations working to advance the opportunities of people in underserved communities
* Incorporate the experience and perspective of a diverse extended team, including a small internal giving and operations unit and large network of advisors
* Complete these steps as privately and anonymously as we can in order to limit burden on non-profits and avoid diverting them from their work

There doesn't seem to be any system or process—that is public anyways—that really lays out how the money is apportioned. It doesn't seem that she has much in the way of quantitative methods for determining who is worthy.

She seems to prioritize organizations based on their leadership, In a past update she writes:

"91% of the racial equity organizations are run by leaders of color, 100% of the LGBTQ+ equity organizations are run by LGBTQ+ leaders, and 83% of the gender equity organizations are run by women"

Her main focus, as the data clearly shows is equity, almost every donation goes to groups that have that as their only or top priority. She writes: ...

"We don’t advocate for particular policies or reforms. Instead, we seek a portfolio of organizations that supports the ability of all people to participate in solutions. This means a focus on the needs of those whose voices have been underrepresented."

I'm glad that the donation data is public, however, it seems that there is nothing in the way of quantifiable or even descriptive accounts of the impact or long-term goals for these donations.

Though for the future she signed the giving pledge and seems to have no plans to change the amount given or her processes. We can expect many more donations to come.

Sources:
-Her website: (Yield Giving)