After reducing her Amazon stake by $12.6 billion, Jeff Bezos' ex-wife MacKenzie Scott makes one of the largest donations to…

Billionaire philanthropist and Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, has donated $80 million to Howard University, marking one of the largest single donations in the school’s 158-year history and continuing her recent surge of major contributions to diversity and equity causes. The donation, announced over the weekend by Howard University, comes as Scott – estimated to be worth $35.6 billion, as per The Wall Street Journal – has been on what observers are calling a philanthropic roll, making several multimillion-dollar gifts to DEI and disaster relief causes in recent weeks.

Donation arrives at critical moment for the school

The donation is unrestricted, allowing the university to allocate the funds as it sees fit. Of the $80 million, $63 million will go to Howard University's general operations, while $17 million will support the school's College of Medicine.

“This historic investment will not only help maintain our current momentum, but will help support essential student aid, advance infrastructure improvements, and build a reserve fund to further sustain operational continuity, student success, academic excellence, and research innovation,” said Wayne A.I. Frederick, Howard interim president and president emeritus, in a statement.

The university says the gift arrives at an "opportune time" as the federal government shutdown has delayed annual federal appropriations that Howard receives to support student success, academic programming, research, and operations at both the university and Howard University Hospital.

The shutdown, which began October 1, has halted new grant awards from the Department of Education after nearly 95% of non-student aid staff were furloughed, leaving only essential personnel working.

Scott’s other donations as part of broader DEI initiatives

Scott’s donation to Howard builds on other recent donations focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. She recently gave $42 million to 10,000 Degrees, a Bay Area nonprofit expanding college access for low-income and largely non-white students, alongside other eight-figure commitments to Native student scholars and HBCU endowments through the United Negro College Fund (UNCF).

The Howard donation comes just weeks after regulatory filings revealed Scott had reduced her Amazon stake by $12.6 billion.

According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing dated September 30 and first reported by Bloomberg, Scott has cut her holdings in the e-commerce giant by nearly 42%, reducing her stake to $12.6 billion. She now holds 81.1 million Amazon shares—down 58 million from a year earlier.

The reduction occurred despite Amazon shares more than doubling in value since Scott's 2019 divorce from Jeff Bezos, the company's co-founder.

Scott obtained most of her wealth following her divorce from Bezos and has pledged to give away the majority of it. After receiving approximately 4% of Amazon in the divorce settlement, she has donated $19 billion to more than 2,000 nonprofits over the past five years and still worth more than $35 billion today.

In June, Bezos got married to former news anchor turned aviation entrepreneur Lauren Sanchez at a grand event in Venice. Before that, the Amazon founder was married to MacKenzie Scott for 25 years. The two met in the early 1990s while working at an investment firm in New York, United States.

They got married in 1993 and later moved to Seattle, where they co-founded Amazon in 1994. MacKenzie played an important role in the company’s early growth, managing contracts and supporting logistics during its initial phase, often working behind the scenes as Bezos focused on expanding the business.