Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott donates $4.2B to organizations including HBCUs

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MacKenzie Scott, writer, philanthropist and ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, on Tuesday announced charitable gifts of about $4.2 billion to 384 organizations, including more than 30 colleges.

Many of the gifts went to historically Black colleges or universities, tribal colleges, or community colleges. Among the beneficiaries is Morgan State University, which was gifted $40 million gift, the largest ever gift in the college’s history.

“These 384 carefully selected teams have dedicated their lives to helping others, working and volunteering and serving real people face-to-face at bedsides and tables, in prisons and classrooms, on streets and hospital wards and hotlines and frontlines of all types and sizes, day after day after day,” Scott said in the statement.

In addition to the gifts to colleges, Scott also announced gifts to an array of other charitable organizations, including food banks, United Way and YMCA chapters.

MacKenzie Scott urged other people to contribute what they can, particularly 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.”

“If you’re craving a way to use your time, voice, or money to help others at the end of this difficult year, I highly recommend a gift to one of the thousands of organizations doing remarkable work all across the country,” she wrote.