MacKenzie Scott received 4 % of Amazon after divorcing Jeff Bezos in 2019.
Instead of keeping that fortune, she began giving it away without imposing restrictions on how to use the money: the organizations that receive her donations can decide what they need to spend it on.
On Friday, March 13, 2026, Chancellor S. Keith Hargrove Sr. announced during Founders Day that Elizabeth City State University, a historically Black university in North Carolina, would receive 42 million dollars.
It is nearly triple the 15 million that Scott had donated to the university in 2020 and, according to the institution, represents the largest per-student contribution among her recent donations to historically Black universities.
Her fortune currently stands at around 27.500 million dollars, according to Forbes’ real-time estimate, while in 2019 she signed the Giving Pledge and committed to donating at least half of her wealth over the course of her lifetime. In 2025 alone, she gave approximately 7.17 billion dollars to 186 organizations, including universities and other institutions dedicated to education, the environment, and various social causes.
Since 2019, her cumulative donations have already exceeded 26 billion dollars. What would you do if you had a fortune like that?
