ex-spouse of Jeff Bezos gives absent $4bn in four months

MacKenzie Scott, the ex-spouse of the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, has donated far more than $4bn in the earlier four months to hundreds of charities and aid organisations, such as foods banks battling the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

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Photograph: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

Scott, who has a own net worthy of of additional than $60bn (£44.5bn), pledged to give away substantially of her prosperity after her divorce settlement with Bezos very last calendar year.

In July, Scott mentioned she had donated $1.7bn to 116 charities. On Tuesday, she claimed she experienced made the decision to “accelerate” her donation system this year, and in the past 4 months has presented a further more $4.15bn to 384 organisations across the US and Puerto Rico, having her overall donations this year to $6bn.

“This pandemic has been a wrecking ball in the lives of Us residents currently struggling,” she wrote in a blogpost titled 384 Techniques to Aid. “Economic losses and wellness results alike have been worse for females, for people today of colour, and for people today dwelling in poverty. Meanwhile, it has considerably enhanced the wealth of billionaires.”

© Photograph: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
MacKenzie Scott claims the coronavirus pandemic ‘has been a wrecking ball in the lives of Individuals by now struggling’.

Bezos, who experienced been married to MacKenzie for 26 decades, is the world’s wealthiest particular person, with a fortune estimated at $182bn, in accordance to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

MacKenzie mentioned she took a “data-driven” approach to deciding on the recipients of donations. However, her crew paid out “special focus to those people operating in communities struggling with large projected food items insecurity, superior actions of racial inequity, large local poverty fees, and reduced accessibility to philanthropic capital”.

She included that some of her donations aimed to fulfil primary desires, such as food stuff banking companies, emergency reduction resources and guidance for the most vulnerable. Many others targeted on extended-phrase issues that the pandemic has exacerbated, these as personal debt reduction, employment coaching and education for “historically marginalised and underserved people”, as nicely as civil legal rights groups and authorized defence funds.

In total, her staff appeared at 6,490 organisations and put 822 into “deeper research”.

This 12 months, Bezos has fully commited $10bn to issues connected to local weather change. In November, he declared the 1st of those people grants, handing out almost $800m to 16 teams.