While billionaires have come under fire for not living up to their philanthropic guarantees, one individual is rising from the remainder: MacKenzie Scott. She’s pouring billions into training, public well being, and the setting—and now, she just funneled a few of her fortune to assist feed and help millions of Americans.
Scott not too long ago gave a $70 million unrestricted donation to Meals on Wheels America, a management group that helps nationwide charities in offering meals, social connection, and security checks to greater than 2 million U.S. seniors and homebound individuals yearly.
The group announced Scott’s donation final Thursday, including that her contribution comes at a time when one in three native Meals on Wheels America suppliers have a wait-list, with aged residents having to wait a mean of 4 months for meals and providers.
Scott’s $70 million donation is just a drop within the bucket of her $26 billion philanthropic streak since 2020. The early Amazon worker and ex-wife of Jeff Bezos price $41.1 billion is rewriting the playbook of billionaire philanthropy.
How Scott’s $70 million donation will help America’s remoted elders
Thanks to Scott’s newest funding, Meals on Wheels mentioned it might probably focus extra on alternatives to “strengthen the network’s capacity” in the long run and provides extra assets to native suppliers.
Meals on Wheels America at the moment helps greater than 5,000 community-based packages associated to senior starvation and isolation. Scott’s present will make a actual distinction, the group says, nevertheless it received’t utterly bridge the nation’s rising wants. It hopes her donation will encourage others to help.
“We will steward the investment thoughtfully and responsibly to help generate economies of scale and impact that strengthen the capacity of local providers so they can reach more older adults with meals, connection and care,” Kristine Templin, chief improvement and advertising officer at Meals on Wheels America, tells Fortune in a assertion.
“Ultimately, success means more seniors are able to access the support they need to live more nourished, independent, and healthy lives.”
Scott’s $26 billion in donations has made her the face of ultrarich philanthropy
Scott isn’t just donating millions to fight America’s problems with starvation and isolation. Her basis, Yield Giving, has been stealthily donating billions since 2020 with no strings connected.
Less than a week in the past, Scott donated $7 million to Minnesota tribal faculty Red Lake Nation College. Just weeks earlier than that, it was revealed Scott had donated $42 million to Elizabeth City State University, certainly one of America’s traditionally Black schools and universities. That contribution set her at a new milestone: It pushed her whole giving to HBCUs over the $1 billion mark. Since 2020, she has been on a spending spree to help the colleges; the 56-year-old has given $20 million to Xavier University, $20 million to Morehouse College, $80 million to Howard University, and $38 million to Spelman College, to title a few.
The mega philanthropist has additionally given an eye-watering $436 million in unrestricted giving to Habitat for Humanity, a world nonprofit group serving to alleviate the housing disaster. Plus she’s invested in local weather motion, donating $90 million to the Forests, People, Climate (FPC) collaborative decided to finish tropical deforestation. Even the Girl Scouts of the USA obtained about $84.5 million from Scott to help ladies’ management and programming.
The philanthropist donated a whopping $7.2 billion in 2025 alone and is called the third most beneficiant philanthropist on the earth, having given away 46% of her internet price, in accordance to an evaluation from Forbes earlier this year. In distinction, Forbes additionally estimated that Bezos and his spouse, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, have donated solely $4.7 billion all through their total lives. In whole, Scott’s philanthropic car Yield Giving totals her more than 2,700 donations at $26 billion—however the measurement of her checks is just one method she’s shaking up billionaire charity.
Notably, philanthropy experts have told Fortune that Scott strays from the pack by her “stealth giving” observe: donating unrestricted cash instantly to nonprofits, trusting them to deal with the funds as they see match. She’s in direct opposition to “very technocratic” methods of giving, emulated by many billionaires who’ve been within the highlight, like Bill Gates. Organizations are eager to see if others will observe in her footsteps.
“I think she’s a trendsetter and sort of moral ballast to the way that Gates has been,” Bella DeVaan, affiliate director of the charity reform initiative on the Institute for Policy Studies, told Fortune final yr. “I do see that being not just a trend, but shifting common sense toward trust-based philanthropy.”
