Large scale philanthropy continues to reshape how capital reaches communities, but its impact often sits alongside quieter acts of generosity that rarely make headlines. In a year when Americans donated more than $590 billion, billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott used her latest public update to place her own giving within that broader context.
Scott disclosed on Tuesday that her charitable donations for 2025 totaled $7.17 billion, distributed among roughly 225 organizations. The figure was published in a blog post reflecting on both institutional philanthropy and everyday civic participation.
“This dollar total will likely be reported in the news, but any dollar amount is a vanishingly tiny fraction of the personal expressions of care being shared into communities this year,” Scott wrote.
The latest round of gifts brings Scott’s total donations since 2019 to $26.3 billion, based on her previous public disclosures. According to Forbes, that places her behind only Warren Buffett and Bill Gates in lifetime giving. Forbes continues to estimate Scott’s net worth at $29.9 billion.
Her 2025 contributions supported a broad mix of causes, including historically Black colleges and universities, as well as nonprofits addressing poverty, climate change and social inequality. Scott has built a reputation for spreading capital across sectors rather than concentrating it within a single policy area or institution.
Following her divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2019, Scott signed The Giving Pledge, committing to donate most of her wealth during her lifetime. She later assembled a team of advisers to help identify “organizations with strong leadership teams and results” across areas of urgent social need.
In earlier writing, Scott said she wanted to pay “special attention to those operating in communities facing high projected food insecurity, high measures of racial inequity, high local poverty rates and low access to philanthropic capital.”
Her latest essay also drew on data from Giving USA, which reported in June that Americans donated more than $590 billion in 2024. Scott noted that most giving happens at a personal level rather than through major grants.
“Over 70% of Americans reported giving both labor and money to people they know, and half reported doing the same for strangers,” she wrote. “It’s easy to focus on the methods of civic participation that make news, and hard to imagine the importance of the things we do each day with our own minds and hearts.”
Scott illustrated that point by sharing examples of generosity she experienced before her wealth. She recalled a “local dentist who offered me free dental work when he saw me securing a broken tooth with denture glue in college,” and a Princeton University roommate “who found me crying, and acted on her urge to loan me a thousand dollars to keep me from having to drop out in my sophomore year.”
That roommate, Jeannie Ringo Tarkenton, later founded Funding U, a lender that provides loans to low income students without requiring a co signer, Scott wrote.
Unlike many billionaire donors, Scott typically gives without conditions. Recipient organizations are free to allocate funds as they see fit, a model that stands apart from philanthropy tied to specific programs or performance metrics. Her blog post did not detail how individual organizations were selected or how funding levels were determined.
Scott has previously said her aim is to “de-emphasize privileged voices” like her own “and cede focus to others.”
“People struggling against inequities deserve center stage in stories about change they are creating,” she wrote in 2021. “This is equally — perhaps especially — true when their work is funded by wealth.”
For business leaders and policymakers, Scott’s approach highlights a growing debate within modern philanthropy: whether impact is best achieved through control and oversight, or through trust and unrestricted capital.
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