One chart shows how MacKenzie Scott's fortune has soared - even as she's become one of the world's leading philanthropists
- MacKenzie Scott is worth $59 billion due to Amazon's soaring share price over the last year.
- At the same time, Scott has given away $8.5 billion since her divorce from Jeff Bezos.
- That means Scott has already made back all the money she's given away and then some.
MacKenzie Scott seems to be making money faster than she can give it away.
Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has emerged as one of the most philanthropic billionaires in the world. Over the course of the last year, Scott has given away a total of $8.5 billion to a wide range of organizations focused on pandemic relief, racial inequality, public health, climate change, and more.
Those donations included $1.7 billion given to 116 organizations that she announced in July 2020; another $4 billion in donations in December 2020; and $2.74 billion granted to 286 organizations in June.
But at the same time that need surged worldwide, so did Amazon's share price. The company currently has a market value of over $1.7 trillion, and sales have continued to soar in 2021: Amazon reported $113.08 billion in revenue in the second quarter and sales were up 27% from the same quarter in 2020.
When Scott and Bezos divorced in 2019, Scott walked away with a 4% stake in Amazon. As a result, her wealth currently stands at $59 billion.
Which means that despite her immense charitable giving, Scott has already made back nearly all the money she's given away:
Scott has spoken in the past of her discomfort with the immense wealth at her disposal. In a blog post from June, when she announced the most recent multibillion-dollar donation, Scott described feeling an awareness that she, her husband, Dan Jewett, and a team of advisors are trying to give away a fortune that was enabled by the very systems they're working to change.
"We are governed by a humbling belief that it would be better if disproportionate wealth were not concentrated in a small number of hands, and that the solutions are best designed and implemented by others," she wrote.
Scott has also signed onto the Giving Pledge, a committement created by Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Melinda French Gates that asks the world's wealthiest people to pledge to give the majority of their fortune to charity.
When she announced that she signed the pledge in 2019, Scott shared that she has a "disproportionate amount of money to share" and that she plans to hand it out slowly over time.
"But I won't wait," she wrote. "And I will keep at it until the safe is empty."