It’s been a busy month for billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. Just last week, the novelist (and former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos), announced a $281 million donation to the Boys & Girls Club of America. Earlier this week, she gave $436 million to Habitat for Humanity. Now, Scott has announced that she has donated $275 million to Planned Parenthood as she continues her pledge to donate the majority of her wealth, which Forbes estimated as more than $59 billion as of the end of 2021.
This donation is the largest gift from a single donor in the organization’s 100-year history, according to Planned Parenthood.
In a statement written on Medium, Scott said her latest donation represented her organization’s commitment to helping those who do not have a voice to make the changes needed in the world.
“Equity can only be realized when all people involved have an opportunity to help shape it,” Scott wrote in her Medium post. “We don’t advocate for particular policies or reforms. Instead, we seek a portfolio of organizations that supports the ability of all people to participate in solutions. This means a focus on the needs of those whose voices have been underrepresented.”
Planned Parenthood provides a wide variety of health services for women, from mammograms to pregnancy consultation, but providing women abortions has put Planned Parenthood at the center of the fierce debate over a woman’s reproductive rights and body autonomy.
“We are incredibly grateful for Ms. Scott’s extraordinary philanthropic investment in Planned Parenthood, as a critical part of the public health infrastructure,” Planned Parenthood Chief Executive Alexis McGill Johnson said in a statement. “This funding will support our efforts to advance health equity by eliminating racial and structural barriers for our patients in the communities where Planned Parenthood works.”
In the past nine months, Scott has donated more than $3.8 billion to 465 different organizations. A New York Times analysis found that she’s given away $12 billion since she first pledged to give away the vast majority of her wealth, in 2019.
In her Medium post, she shared a list of the organizations that have received funds from her foundation, which include CARE Ukraine Relief Efforts, Digital Promise, FoodCorps and Habitat for Humanity, just to name a few.
“We look forward to sharing the work of these remarkable organizations through this database of their gifts, 1257 to date since my pledge to give away this money with steadiness and care,” Scott wrote. “Each non-profit it will list was selected through a rigorous process, and has a strong track record of serving under-supported needs.”
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