MacKenzie Scott has earned her philanthropic merit badge.
Less than a month after filing for divorce from her second Dan Jewett, the billionaire donated $84.5 million to the Girl Scouts of the USA, according to an Oct. 18 press release.
This investment marks the largest donation from a single individual in the organization's history and will be awarded to GSUSA and 29 local councils.
"We are so appreciative of MacKenzie Scott's gift to Girl Scouts," Girl Scouts of the USA CEO Sofia Chang said in the release. "This is a great accelerator for our ongoing efforts to help girls cultivate the skills and connections needed to lead in their own communities and globally. We're excited to prove how Ms. Scott's investment in girls will change the world—because when one girl succeeds, we all succeed."
Scott—who was married to Jeff Bezos from Tk to 2019—certainly has the cash to back up her pledge. In April, 52-year-old was named the fourth richest woman in the world by Forbes, with her net worth reported at $43.6 billion at the time.
After her 2019 divorce from Bezos, Scott walked away with a cool $35 billion in assets, including 25 percent of his Amazon stake, according to The New York Times. She and the former former CEO share four children.
Scott went on to marry Jewett in December 2021 but filed for divorce less than a year later on Sept. 26, per court documents obtained by E! News. According to the docs, the pair share a written separation contract, which Scott is asking the court to uphold in their split. The separation contract—which was signed by Jewett days prior to the divorce filing—will be used to divide their possessions, property, assets and debts, the docs stated.
Scott's gift to the Girt Scouts' comes seven months after the billionaire philanthropist donated a combined total of more than $700 million to nonprofit organizations Planned Parenthood and Habitat for Humanity.
She previously explained why she prefers the use the word "giving" instead of "philanthropy" to describe what she's doing with her money, insisting that the focus shouldn't be on a dollar number, but rather the good the organizations do.
"We tend to give more focus to things we can tally, and to rank everything else," Scott wrote in an essay posted to Medium in 2021. "Why does one form of compassionate action, one group of beneficiaries, one group of givers have to be more important than the others? Financially valuable versus socially valuable."
The novelist added that she prefers to leave it up to groups who've received her money to "speak for themselves first if they choose to, with the hope that when they do, media focuses on their contributions instead of mine."