Monthlyish emails with realistic suggestions on better aligning your money and your personal values
MacKenzie Scott is famously tight lipped about how she’s making decisions to give away her estimated $40 billion net worth. But researchers at Harvard have analyzed publicly available data to see what trends emerge. Where does she donate? And is any of it applicable to our own giving?
Links from today’s episode:
MacKenzie Scott’s Giving Pledge to give the majority of her wealth away
https://givingpledge.org/pledger?pledgerId=393
What MacKenzie Scott Wants in a Grantee– A New Analysis Offers Clues
Harvard Research on MacKenzie Scott’s Giving
ICYMI another episode you might enjoy:
Episode 88 Where does Rihanna donate her money? (recorded before the 2024 rebranding of this show)
Connect With Genet “GG” Gimja:
Website https://www.progressivepockets.com
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Email progressivepockets@gmail.com for brand partnerships, business inquiries, and speaking engagements.
Support the showWelcome to Progressive Pockets! I go by GG, that’s short for Genet Gimja and I’m your host. Progressive Pockets is a place where you and I can spend some time talking about ways we can walk the talk in terms of our values. So if you’re up at night thinking about climate change, we can talk about a few suggestions for greening our 401Ks. If you’re pissed off about the sheer amount of power that the gun industry has in our country, we can talk about figuring out if your bank is quietly pushing money into those politician’s campaigns. Whatever your values are, I think we can find ways to better line up our daily money decisions with those values. Yes, even in this economy!
From time to time on this show, we’ve talked about celebrity giving or billionaire giving and that’s because well, it’s interesting and more importantly, it might spark some thinking as we think about how we donate our own money.
Today let’s talk about MacKenzie Scott and how she decides where she’s going to donate. Her net worth is estimated at $40 billion dollars, billion with a B. This is the GDP of Bolivia. And Bolivia has a population of 12 million people y’all. Aaaaaah. Anybody else freaked out about income inequality? I’m sweating. That’s OK, that’s why we’re here. To get past that overwhelmed feeling and into some practical things we can actually do. Taking action is better than going down the emotional spiral. Ok, actually check that with your therapist, maybe sometimes we should sit with our feelings, I don’t know. Aaaaah! Let’s take a deep breath together.
(deep breath)
When I think about MacKenzie Scott’s giving, I think about the letter she wrote when she signed the Giving Pledge, promising to give away the majority of her wealth. In that letter she talks about not saving your best for later, use your best now. In other words, give your money away now, not when you die. I’m not quoting her exact words, she writes very beautifully. If you’re interested, I’ll include a link to this letter as well. She says she’s going to give until “the safe is empty.” I hope she does. Back in episode 67 you may remember a deep dive into whether or not the founder of Patagonia really gave his company away, as he said he did in a very splashy public announcement that the media absolutely loved. MacKenzie Scott, seems to be saying she’s literally going to give away all of her money, I hope this is what she does. So many people need help right now. Let the billionaires of tomorrow donate tomorrow. If you’re a billionaire today, help the people today.
MacKenzie Scott writes a lot about her giving, she writes on Medium every 6 months or so. She is definitely sitting with her feelings and pairing it with action. She ponders things like why is philanthropy. Why is generosity. Who are the people that are doing the grassroots work. What kind of impact can we have on a person’s life? Beautiful writing, I’ll link her Medium page. I do wish we could maybe suggest subject topics for her to ponder. Like, how can she tackle the root causes of the grotesque amount of wealth she is now working hard to give away. Why is there this grotesque amount of income inequality? And how can she use her extreme amount of power to change that? She seems like such a thinker, I would love to read her thoughts on these questions.
MacKenzie Scott is working to give away large amounts of money and she’s giving to a really wide set of causes and geographies.
But what’s the strategy behind it? Or if we can’t get access to her exact strategic plan and roadmap, what can we gather from studying the patterns we’ve seen so far?
Well that’s exactly the subject of a piece that was published in The Chronicle of Philanthropy in January of 2024. Of course, I’ll include the links in the show notes as always. The article focuses on research coming out of the Harvard University, they looked at the donations she has documented on her site over the years, they cross referenced those organizations that had received money from her with the IRS filings for those organizations. And then they looked for trends.
Average donation size turned out to be about $8 million. Again, her net worth is about $40 billion, so her average donation size of $8 million is a tiny fraction of her bucket of money. And her money is invested, so it is continuing to compound and grow and grow. If you think about a person with $40 billion giving away $8 million, it’s like if someone with $200,000 dollars gave away 40 bucks. It’s not even a rounding error, you wouldn’t miss the $40 in your account, ok. Let’s all keep that in mind when we hear about these big donations that the super wealthy are giving. We’re often talking about chump change. Because it is hard for us to deeply understand the magnitude of their wealth. Remember when the Occupy Wall Street organizers were trying to get us all to understand that? I remember watching the morning news and one of their organizers had two large pizzas and they were slicing them up to show that 99% of Americans are essentially sharing a small slice of pizza while the 1% had the rest of the two pizzas. Math. Not our strongest suit as a nation.
Average donation for MacKenzie Scott is $8 million, in my mind I’m going to keep thinking of it as being about $40 bucks for an American that has $200,000.
She has donated money to organizations in each of the 50 states of the U.S., slightly more of her giving has gone to the southern states. She has also donated to organizations outside of the US, but that doesn’t seem to be a huge focus area for her giving.
Her top causes have been health care, education, human services (for example job training or helping to prevent unplanned pregnancies), and housing. But she gives to a wide wide assortment of causes. For example, she has donated to legal aid organizations.
When she has called for proposals, she has asked for “community-led, community-focused organizations.”
She tends NOT to give towards: science & technology, religion, medical research, and animal welfare.
MacKenzie Scott tends to give unrestricted donations, what that means is that she is not dictating exactly how the organization has to use the money. She’s ok with some of the money going towards whatever the organization needs, they need books to stock their shelves, fine. They need food to hand out, fine. They need to pay for a facility for their offices, fine. They need to pay employee salaries, fine.
So to recap, here’s what we covered today, and I’m going to highlight what we might find interesting for our own giving:
If you have a few more minutes, I want to suggest another episode that you might enjoy: this would be a very different approach from another billionaire, Rihanna. That is episode 88. Rihanna’s approach has been to narrow down to a very specific 1 or 2 issues in a very specific region. Caring for women’s health despite climate change in the Caribbean. Check out episode 88, it’s so inspiring and so interesting. Makes you want to figure out what your specific focus could be. It’s exciting to think about!
And what a journey we went on today together. From freaking out about income inequality to getting excited to figuring out our signature cause for our own giving.
Let’s end with a quote, and we will quote the person of the hour, MacKenzie Scott in one of her essays I was reading on Medium as I researched this episode:
“Each unique expression of generosity will have value far beyond what we can imagine or live to see.”
If you enjoyed this episode, send it to someone! It’s still how podcasts grow. Word of mouth. You can go to progressive pockets dot com if you want to browse the backlog for this show. Or you can also connect on twitter. Just take all the vowels out of progressive pockets, that’s the handle. And if you want to get in touch to suggest a topic, you can email progressive pockets at gmail dot com. That’s all for today, let’s talk again soon!
Links from today's episode
https://givingpledge.org/pledger?pledgerId=393
