Billionaire philanthropist Mackenzie Scott released her final tally of 2025 charitable giving, totaling $7.17 billion to approximately 225 organizations, she said in a blog post published Tuesday.
“While this sum will likely be reported in the news, any amount is only a fraction of the personal expressions of care shared in our community this year,” Scott wrote.
Based on Scott’s publicly disclosed past charitable giving, the 2025 gift brings her total giving since 2019 to $26.3 billion. This year’s donations went to a wide range of nonprofit organizations, including several historically black universities and organizations focused on issues such as poverty, social injustice and climate change.
According to Forbes magazine, Scott’s latest philanthropic tally ranks him behind fellow billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates in terms of lifetime giving. Forbes still estimates Scott, who became one of the world’s richest women after divorcing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2019, to have a net worth of $29.9 billion.
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After her divorce, Scott signed a Giving Pledge, pledging to donate the majority of her assets during her lifetime. She tasked her team of advisors to help strengthen philanthropic giving by identifying “strong leadership teams and high-achieving organizations” across a wide range of social needs, she wrote in a 2020 blog post.
Specifically, he said, “We want to pay special attention to those working in communities facing anticipated future food insecurity, high levels of racial inequality, high rates of local poverty, and low access to philanthropic funding.”
In an essay on Tuesday, Scott wrote about putting his giving into perspective, citing data from Giving USA, which reported in June that Americans gave more than $590 billion in charitable giving in 2024. Much of the country’s philanthropy, financial and otherwise, takes place on a relatively small scale, Scott wrote.
“More than 70 percent of Americans reported giving both effort and money to someone they know, and half reported doing the same to a stranger,” Scott said, adding, “It’s easy to focus on the ways of civic engagement that make the news, but it’s hard to imagine the importance of what we do with our hearts and minds every day.”
Scott cited multiple examples of generosity he received before he became wealthy, which he said inspired his latest philanthropic efforts. She writes of “a local dentist who saw me fixing a broken tooth in college with denture adhesive and offered free dental care,” and of her Princeton roommate, “who found me crying and on her impulse lent me a thousand dollars to keep me from dropping out my sophomore year.”
That roommate, Jeannie Ringo Tarkenton, founded Funding U, a student finance company that provides loans to low-income students without the need for a cosigner, Scott noted.
Highlighting these examples, Scott encouraged public participation in a variety of ways, from monetary gifts to random acts of kindness: “Respect, understanding, insight, empathy, forgiveness, and inspiration are all meaningful contributions to others.”
Scott’s blog post does not elaborate on how or why she chose any of the hundreds of organizations she supported in 2025. The longstanding aspect of her giving stands out in contrast to many other billionaire philanthropists. Her donations usually have no strings attached. This means that organizations can use the funds as they wish.
Her goal is to “de-emphasize privileged voices” like hers and “shift the focus to others,” she wrote in a 2021 blog post.
“Those fighting inequality deserve center stage in stories about the change they are creating,” Scott wrote in the post. “This is perhaps especially true if their work is funded by wealth as well.”
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