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MacKenzie Scott donates another $2.7 billion to 286 organizations

15 June 2021
 Dan Ackermann

MacKenzie Scott announced Tuesday that she and her husband, Dan Jewett, had donated $2.74 billion to 286 different organizations, including community-based nonprofits and organizations focused on racial justice.

Why it matters: It's the next phase of what the New York Times describes as a "highly unconventional approach" to philanthropy from one of the richest women in the world.

  • Scott has doled out billions of dollars in donations over the last year, including nearly $6 billion to 500 organizations in 2020, per the Times.
  • "Putting large donors at the center of stories on social progress is a distortion of their role," Scott wrote in a blog post. "Me, Dan, a constellation of researchers and administrators and advisors — we are all attempting to give away a fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change."

Details: Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, listed the nearly 300 "high-impact organizations" that the donations will benefit.

  • Scott said the philanthropies fall into categories "that have been historically underfunded and overlooked."
  • The groups receiving portions of the donation include arts groups, such as the Arts Forward Fund and Art for Justice Fund; institutes of higher education, such as Cal Poly Pomona and Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College; and community-based groups fighting discrimination, such as Black Led Movement Fund and Emerging LGBTQ Leaders of Color Fund.

What she's saying: "People struggling against inequities deserve center stage in stories about change they are creating," Scott wrote. "This is equally — perhaps especially — true when their work is funded by wealth."

  • "In this effort, we are governed by a humbling belief that it would be better if disproportionate wealth were not concentrated in a small number of hands, and that the solutions are best designed and implemented by others."
  • "Though we still have a lot to learn about how to act on these beliefs without contradicting and subverting them, we can begin by acknowledging that people working to build power from within communities are the agents of change."

Our thought bubble, via Axios chief financial correspondent Felix Salmon:Scott is becoming ever more adamant that this isn't her philanthropy; she's simply trying to enable others to spend her money as they see fit.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.