One chart shows how MacKenzie Scott's fortune has soared - even as she's become one of the world's leading philanthropists

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One chart shows how MacKenzie Scott's fortune has soared - even as she's become one of the world's leading philanthropists
MacKenzie Scott. Taylor Hill/FilmMagic via Getty Images; Taylor Borden/Business Insider
  • MacKenzie Scott is worth $59 billion due to Amazon's soaring share price over the last year.
  • At the same time, Scott has given away $8.5 billion since her divorce from Jeff Bezos.
  • That means Scott has already made back all the money she's given away and then some.
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MacKenzie Scott seems to be making money faster than she can give it away.

Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has emerged as one of the most philanthropic billionaires in the world. Over the course of the last year, Scott has given away a total of $8.5 billion to a wide range of organizations focused on pandemic relief, racial inequality, public health, climate change, and more.

Those donations included $1.7 billion given to 116 organizations that she announced in July 2020; another $4 billion in donations in December 2020; and $2.74 billion granted to 286 organizations in June.

But at the same time that need surged worldwide, so did Amazon's share price. The company currently has a market value of over $1.7 trillion, and sales have continued to soar in 2021: Amazon reported $113.08 billion in revenue in the second quarter and sales were up 27% from the same quarter in 2020.

When Scott and Bezos divorced in 2019, Scott walked away with a 4% stake in Amazon. As a result, her wealth currently stands at $59 billion.

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Which means that despite her immense charitable giving, Scott has already made back nearly all the money she's given away:

Read more: Bill Gates and Warren Buffett got 211 billionaires to pledge half their wealth to charity. But some are moving slow - and still getting massive tax breaks.

Scott has spoken in the past of her discomfort with the immense wealth at her disposal. In a blog post from June, when she announced the most recent multibillion-dollar donation, Scott described feeling an awareness that she, her husband, Dan Jewett, and a team of advisors are trying to give away a fortune that was enabled by the very systems they're working to change.

"We are governed by a humbling belief that it would be better if disproportionate wealth were not concentrated in a small number of hands, and that the solutions are best designed and implemented by others," she wrote.

Scott has also signed onto the Giving Pledge, a committement created by Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Melinda French Gates that asks the world's wealthiest people to pledge to give the majority of their fortune to charity.

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When she announced that she signed the pledge in 2019, Scott shared that she has a "disproportionate amount of money to share" and that she plans to hand it out slowly over time.

"But I won't wait," she wrote. "And I will keep at it until the safe is empty."

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