Following her divorce from Jeff Bezos and her resultant massive fortune, MacKenzie Scott has been particularly focused on philanthropy. She pledged back in 2019 to give away the majority of that fortune to various good causes, and now the Associated Press is reporting that the organization has announced Scott’s largest donation yet: $436 million to Habitat for Humanity International and 84 of the organization’s affiliates throughout the United States.
Jonathan Reckford is the CEO of Habitat for Humanity International, and he says his organization received $25 million of that massive sum. The rest will be distributed among local Habitat chapters to use as they see fit in their mission to build affordable housing for poor and working-class families.
“We could not be more excited to get the gift at a time when, in some ways, the state of housing affordability is the worst that it has been in modern times,” said Reckford in a statement to the press.
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It makes sense that Reckford would be excited about such a donation. According to the AP, the $25 million portion of Scott’s gift made up an eight percent slice of all of Habitat for Humanity International’s donations for the 2020 fiscal year – an impressive stat given that it came from a single charitable individual.
Scott herself hasn’t commented on the donation. Her policy is to let the organizations she donates to make the announcements in the hopes of minimizing attention – a worthy goal, but tough when you’re donating such big amounts to high-profile philanthropic orgs like Habitat for Humanity. That isn’t the only such organization to announce a big gift from Scott in recent days: others include Boys & Girls Clubs of America, which announced a $281 million donation similarly dispersed among local chapters of the organization, and Planned Parenthood, which recently announced a donation of $275 million from Scott.