MacKenzie Scott, philanthropist, author and ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has married a Seattle science teacher. Dan Jewett made the announcement in a letter on the website of the nonprofit organization The Giving Pledge on Saturday.
Jewett said he never imagined he would be able to talk about giving away important riches during his lifetime in order to make a difference in other people’s lives. He expressed his gratitude “for the exceptional privilege of partnering to give away assets with the potential to do so much good when shared.”
Jewett has been a teacher for decades and most recently taught chemistry at the private Lakeside School, where Scott’s children attended.
The promise to give
“And now, in a happy coincidence, I am married to one of the most generous and kind people I know, and I join her in the commitment to pass on enormous financial wealth in the service of others,” Jewett wrote.
After donating $ 1.668 billion to 116 nonprofits, universities, community development groups and legal organizations last July, Scott asked a team of advisers to help him “accelerate” by 2020 by donating with immediate help to those who were economically destroyed by the pandemic.
Scott donated a total of $ 5.7 billion in 2020 asking community leaders to help identify 512 seven- and eight-figure gift organizations, including food banks, human services organizations, and charities. racial justice.
She was ranked No. 2 among the 50 Americans who donated the most to charity last year, according to the Philanthropy Chronicle’s annual ranking.
Bezos topped the list by donating $ 10 billion to launch the Bezos Earth Fund.
Scott announced a wave of charitable gifts in December in a post on Medium, which was inspired by grassroots efforts to help people in need, such as community refrigerators and “improvised person-to-person Venmo gifts.” . Scott said he started looking at 6,490 organizations and then narrowed his list to 384 organizations that have “high impact potential.”
Many of these organizations, such as food banks, address basic needs, while others focus on what Scott called “long-term systemic inequalities that have been deepened by the crisis.” Among the beneficiaries:
- More than 40 food banks feeding America, ranging from the Central California Food Bank to the Vermont Foodbank
- More than 40 Goodwill subsidiaries, such as Goodwill Hawaii and Goodwill of the Heartland
- 30 Meals on Wheels member programs, such as Meals on Wheels South Florida and Meals on Wheels Atlanta
- Educational institutions such as Lehman College at City University of New York and Morgan State University in Baltimore
“We first shared each of our gift decisions with program leaders over the phone and welcomed them to spend funding on what they believe best serves their efforts,” he wrote. “Responses from people who received the calls often included personal stories and tears.”
Aimee Picchi collaborated on this report.