The unique charity style of Amazon chief's ex-wife

In just over a year, author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has turned the world of charitable giving on its head.

Ms Scott, the former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, whose divorce resulted in her gaining a fortune in Amazon shares that made her one of the richest women on earth, pledged in 2019 to figure out how to give away her billions quickly.

She has since established a unique style of no-strings-attached philanthropy, giving US$6 billion (S$8 billion) last year, much of it to groups serving people hit hardest by the pandemic, and working to right systemic inequities.

Ms Scott, 50, made headlines again on March 6 when news emerged of her marriage to a Seattle science teacher, Mr Dan Jewett.

On the website of The Giving Pledge campaign, which encourages billionaires to give away a majority of their wealth to charity, Mr Jewett wrote publicly about their marriage, and declared that he planned to join Ms Scott in giving away most of their wealth to charity.

"In a stroke of happy coincidence, I am married to one of the most generous and kind people I know - and joining her in a commitment to pass on an enormous financial wealth to serve others," he said in his post.

Ms Scott's style of charity is notable for its "unsolicited and unexpected gifts given with full trust and no strings attached", as she wrote in her post on Dec 16 last year, when she announced that she had given US$4 billion to 384 groups in the last four months of the year.

"Not only are non-profits chronically underfunded, they are also chronically diverted from their work by fund raising, and by burdensome reporting requirements that donors often place on them," she wrote.

Ms Scott said she gave these groups maximum flexibility, paying the entire sum up front and leaving it unrestricted, so that they could spend it on whatever they believed best served their efforts.

The groups that Ms Scott and her team chose to help have been departures from the norm, uniquely focused on addressing racial inequality and other systemic inequities, and are the sort of organisations that do not typically get the attention and largesse of most big donors.

These included historically black colleges and universities, civil rights advocacy groups, legal defence funds tackling institutional discrimination, as well as organisations working on debt relief and credit and financial services for under-resourced communities, she wrote in her post.

The Centre for Disaster Philanthropy research group wrote in its report published last week: "Her high-profile giving was notable not only for its scale but also its approach and relative transparency."

It added: "Her large grants to 384 non-profits in the US were unsolicited and unrestricted, with an intentional focus on organisations working in areas of high poverty and high racial inequity and with low access to capital."

If there is one critique of Ms Scott's giving, it is that she could be more transparent, say philanthropy experts who note that she does not publicly disclose the amounts her recipients are getting. She is not required to do so as she is not donating through a foundation but through a fund.

Dr Maribel Morey, a historian of American philanthropy, told The Sunday Times that Ms Scott's new marriage is unlikely to drastically impact her philanthropy.

"If anything, I would hope that Dan Jewett's experience as a state employee increasingly will encourage Scott to greater public transparency in her giving practices," said Dr Morey, a founding executive director of the Miami Institute for the Social Sciences.

Ms Scott's charity also takes place against a backdrop of polarised opinion about how billionaires are able to accrue so much wealth in the first place, given the stark income inequality in America.

The Bloomberg Billionaires Index puts her net worth at US$55.8 billion, making her the 22nd-wealthiest individual in the world. Ms Scott, who started Amazon together with Mr Bezos and was married to him for 25 years, received 4 per cent of Amazon's shares under their divorce settlement in 2019.