Billionaire MacKenzie Scott donates record-setting nearly $85M to Girl Scouts

Girl Scouts of the USA received the largest single donation in its history on Tuesday, courtesy of billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.

The $84.5 million gift will be distributed among the national organization and 29 local councils hand-selected by Scott, NBC News reported.

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Scott, who was formerly married to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is worth an estimated $27.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a ranking updated daily of the 500 richest people in the world. Scott currently ranks 41st on the list, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Scott, 52, pledged to donate about half of her more than $35 billion fortune to charity following her 2019 divorce from Bezos, according to NBC News.

According to a Girl Scouts news release, the funds will go toward creating “more equitable membership opportunities” in underserved areas; expanding programming in career readiness, mental health and STEM fields; bolstering research, staff and volunteer training; and upgrading Girl Scout facilities to be more accessible and resilient to climate change, among other factors.

Girl Scouts of the USA chief executive Sofia Chang called Scott’s gift a “great accelerator for our ongoing efforts to help girls cultivate the skills and connections needed to lead in their own communities and globally.”

“The support from all our donors, including this generous donation from Ms. Scott, is critical in delivering on our work of reimagination and transformation. We’re excited to prove how Ms. Scott’s investment in girls will change the world — because when one girl succeeds, we all succeed,” she added.

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According to the Journal, Scott has donated billions of dollars to hundreds of organizations since signing the Giving Pledge, an initiative encouraging the world’s richest individuals and couples to give more than half their wealth to charitable causes, since 2019. The pledge was launched by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, his now ex-wife Melinda French Gates and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett.

To date, Scott’s philanthropic endeavors have benefited educational programs, food banks, COVID-19 relief programs and historically Black colleges and universities, the newspaper reported.

Scott confirmed in a Medium essay in March that she had given 465 groups – including Habitat for Humanity International and Planned Parenthood Federation of America – nearly $3.9 billion in the previous nine months. Two months later she donated nearly $123 million to Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and another nearly $39 million to Junior Achievement USA in mid-August.

Founded in 1912, the Girl Scouts host troops, service projects, camps and other events to cultivate leadership and other skills — including coding, robotics, financial literacy and computer science — for about 2.5 million members, according to its website.

In September, Scott filed for divorce from her second husband, Dan Jewett.

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