In May 2022, Musk said the Democratic Party was sidelining his companies because Scott had donated to political action committees "posing as charities." He also said that she disliked Bezos and that this was resulting in many other people "getting caught in the crossfire."But Hans Peter Schmitz, the Bob and Carol Mattocks distinguished professor of nonprofit leadership at North Carolina State University, told BI in September that Scott was setting a powerful example for other philanthropists to follow.
Schmitz said Scott was giving strategically, investing more directly, and relying on consultants to ensure she gave to the best nonprofits in an area. He noted, however, that she was letting the recipients decide how to spend their gifts and hadn't tied up her fortune in a grant system or foundation.
In announcing the gifts on her Yield Giving website, Scott mulled over the meaning of “investing,” writing that it “seems to have undergone a kind of semantic shriveling. On the list of its big, beautiful, original definitions? To devote resources for a useful purpose. To endow with rights. To clothe.”
Melinda French Gates says billionaires Ackman, Musk, Thiel don't count as philanthropists: 'Go look at their record'
Melinda French Gates has said the new generation of billionaire activists aren't doing enough.French Gates also said Elon Musk's criticism of her political endorsements was "silly."
She previously said she'd continue to give to organizations that support "women's rights.
Even Ackman and Musk, who have signed the Giving Pledge promising to give away most of their assets, still have work to do, she said, and while each of the billionaires has his own foundation, French Gates said they “have not been very philanthropic yet.”
The billionaire philanthropist and ex-wife of Jeff Bezos has donated more than $17 billion in less than five years“Super rich ex-wives who hate their former spouse’ should filed [sic] be listed among "Reasons that Western Civilization died," Musk replied, according to an archived version of the now-deleted post.
Elon Musk says it’s time for Trump to ‘sail into the sunset’ JUL 12 2022
Marlene Engelhorn, 32, has spent years criticizing the birth lottery by which she inherited tens of millions and does not have to give any of it to the state, and calling for change.“Now, it is up to the political actors to do justice to what this group representative of the Austrian population has embodied,” Engelhorn said, calling for more debate on these issues.
MacKenzie Scott upended philanthropy as we know it. Melinda French Gates is catching on
In her cameo in the 1996 comedy First Wives Club, Ivana Trump offers a witty post-divorce kernel of wisdom: 'Don't get mad, get everything.' The 2024 version of that sentiment, at least among a certain class of billionaire women, might tack on an addendum: Get everything, and give it all away as fast as humanly possible.That’s the way MacKenzie Scott, one of America’s single largest philanthropists, has chosen to disburse the spoils of her divorce from Jeff Bezos in 2019. And it’s a style that Melinda French Gates appears to be emulating, at least partly, in her newly solo philanthropic venture.
French Gates’ mother Elaine often told her daughter that if she didn't set her own agenda, somebody else would.
The foundation French Gates has just left is richer than some countries. It had an endowment of $75.2 billion in December 2023. It has given away $76 billion or so since 2000, including close to $8 billion in the past year. Its work reaches 48 states and 135 countries, and while its focus is global health, it also touches education, agriculture, water, climate, financial systems, gender equality, and family planning, among other things.
The struggle to bring equity to women was already under way before French Gates was born. It would be a mistake to call it a revolution, because it has been very slow and things have not fully turned around. But for many women in low-income countries, whose position was and is precarious, the foundation’s programs made an enormous difference, especially to their health. No country has ceased being grindingly poor without improving the lot of women; it is now a tenet of international development that gender equality is macrocritical. French Gates is one of the engines that have driven this work.
On Tuesday, French Gates revealed in a New York Times essay that her first project after leaving the foundation she co-founded with her ex, Bill Gates, would focus on advancing women’s rights around the world.
French Gates said she is “experimenting with novel tactics” such as doling out $20 million grants to 12 smart people and letting them do with it what they see fit. “I’m eager to see the landscape of funding opportunities through their eyes.”
But Bezos has not signed the Giving Pledge, a popular way for the ultra-rich to declare their charitable intentions, and many of his big-ticket promises have come under scrutiny. Most recently, Bezos made a $100 million pledge to help rebuild Maui after last year’s wildfires. But in January, Bloomberg reported that local officials and nonprofits on the island hadn’t received any money from Bezos.
Gates, with a net worth of $154 billion, has also faced criticism for the Gates Foundation’s methods.
“Gates’s vast wealth could help the world in far-reaching ways, for example if it were redistributed as cash gifts to the poor,” the journalist Tim Schwab recently wrote in The Nation. “That can’t happen through the Gates Foundation’s father-knows-best, look-at-me brand of bureaucratic philanthropy.”
- Widow of Berkshire Director David Gottesman, Donates $1 Billion For Free Medical School Tuition.
Ruth Gottesman, 93, was previously a professor at Einstein College of Medicine, ran a literacy program at the school and also serves on the school's board of trustees.
- Elon Musk is lashing out at MacKenzie Scott for donating billions to charities for women and minorities
"'Super rich ex-wives who hate their former spouse' should filed be listed among 'Reasons that Western Civilization died,'" Musk wrote in an X post referencing Jeff Bezos' ex-wife.Musk was responding to another user who said Scott had been giving money to organizations that "deal with issues of race and/or gender."
- Warren Buffett Has Given $50.7 Billion Toward Historic Pledges to the Gates Foundation and Others
- Megadonors philanthropy: 15-billion
Jeff Bezos' ex-wife Mackenzie Scott Donated $2.15 billion to hundreds of charities last year and helped thousands in need from rural India to South Minneapolis
2023 - she allocated substantial amounts to
2022 - her contributions were remarkable:
MacKenzie is the third-wealthiest woman in the world and is the ex-wife of Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. MacKenzie was reportedly supportive of Bezos decision to begin Amazon as an e-commerce site in 1994. She helped created Amazon's first business plan and was Amazon's first accountant.
- Warren Buffett's Son Howard Buffett Has Donated Over $500 Million To Ukraine, Says Congress Should Step up
He warned in the interview that the world will be less safe if Putin's invasion succeeds, adding that his foundation budgeted another $300 million for Ukraine this year.