July 30, 2021- 10:38 a.m.
Billionaire tech exes Mackenzie Scott — formerly MacKenzie Bezos — and Melinda French Gates teamed up to donate nearly $50 million to fund gender equality projects.
Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos — who Forbes claims is the richest person in the world with a worth of more than $200 billion — has been criticized for years for not sharing his mega wealth.
The two philanthropists — along with billionaire Lynn Schusterman’s family foundation — each awarded $10 million to four projects as part of The Equality Can’t Wait Challenge, a funding competition launched in June 2020 with the goal of increasing the power and influence of women in the US.
Two additional finalists were awarded $4 million each for the projects, which were selected from a pool of more than 500 submitted proposals from across the country.
They each gave $10 million to four projects as part of The Equality Can’t Wait Challenge, a funding competition that promotes women’s empowerment.
Scott, who divorced Bezos in 2019, and French Gates, who is currently going through a divorce with Bill Gates, have a history of philanthropy and generous donations and signed The Giving Pledge, which was created by Bill and Melinda French Gates and is a pledge to give away at least half of their wealth.
Other co-signers include Steve and Jean Case; Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan; and Sarah Blakely.
Scott has a net worth of $61 billion, and French Gates has a net worth of $3.2 billion, according to Forbes.
In a Medium message in December, Scott revealed that she had given away $4.1 billion to hundreds of organizations in the past four months in an effort to help those financially weighed down by the COVID-19 pandemic.
She had previously donated $1.68 billion in July 2020 to 116 nonprofits, universities, community development groups and legal organizations as part of The Giving Pledge.
To date, Bezos has not signed The Giving Pledge and has given $1.5 billion to charity — 0.7 percent of his net worth — according to a report released Tuesday in Time magazine.
Bezos, who went into space on July 19, has been criticized for years for not donating
In the same story, Time reported that on July 19, Bezos spent $5.5 billion flying to space and got richer after his wealth reportedly increased by $13 billion the day before due to a surge in Amazon’s stock price.
Benjamin Soskis, who researches philanthropy for the Urban Institute, told Time magazine that Bezos’ philanthropy is “the strange tension between its scale and its strange lack of consistency.”
Scott’s ex-husband Jeff Bezos, who is Forbes’ richest person in the world, has been criticized for years for hoarding his mega-wealth
He has pledged a large amount. But it still feels very, very half-baked,” Soskis said.
