As MacKenzie Scott continues to reshape modern philanthropy with her record-breaking donations, she’s taking a moment to credit the everyday generosity that helped guide her path — including a roommate’s $1,000 loan that kept her from leaving college.
“Whose generosity did I think of every time I made every one of the thousands of gifts I’ve been able to give?” Scott, 55, wrote in an essay on the Yield Giving website — the philanthropic organization she launched in 2022. “It was the local dentist who offered me free dental work when he saw me securing a broken tooth with denture glue in college.”
She added, “It was the college 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.”
Scott’s divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2019 resulted in her receiving about 139 million shares of Amazon stock, according to Fortune. Since then, she has donated or sold 58 million shares. Through Yield Giving, she has distributed an estimated $19.25 billion and currently holds a net worth of more than $35 billion.
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Her philanthropy focuses on advancing racial, gender and LGBTQ+ equity, improving public health, addressing climate change, and supporting justice-driven organizations, according to Yield Giving.
This fall, Scott made history by committing more than $700 million to historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), according to ABC News. Recent contributions include $63 million to Prairie View A&M University in Texas, $50 million to Bowie State University in Maryland, and $19 million to Philander Smith University in Arkansas — some of the largest gifts those institutions have ever received.
For Scott, kindness matters whether or not it comes with a dollar amount. It’s a belief she and her former Princeton University roommate, Jeannie Ringo Tarkenton, share, according to Princeton Alumni Weekly.
“I’ve always said she would have graduated without that grace,” Tarkenton told the publication. “But small graces everywhere add up — or big graces, when it comes to MacKenzie’s giving.”
Tarkenton later founded Funding U, a company providing low-interest education loans without requiring a cosigner — helping roughly 8,000 students secure $80 million in financing, Princeton Alumni Weekly said.
In her recent essay, Scott wrote that she made sure to support Tarkenton’s mission.
“And to whom will each of the thousands of students thriving on those generosity- and gratitude-powered student loans go on to give? None of us has any idea,” she wrote.
Scott believes that these moments of care — large or small — form the foundation of a stronger, more compassionate society.
“The potential of peaceful, non-transactional contribution has long been underestimated,” she wrote in her essay We Are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For. “What if these so-called weaknesses foster the strengths upon which the thriving (or even survival) of our civilization depends?”
She continued, “What if acts of service that we can feel but can’t always measure expand our capacity for connection and trust? What if care is a way for all of us to make a difference in leading and shaping our countries?”
