How MacKenzie Scott quadrupled her philanthropic giving in 2025

“A vanishingly tiny fraction.” That’s how billionaire MacKenzie Scott sees her $7.2 billion charitable giving in 2025, almost four times the size of her $2 billion total grant in 2024. It’s a view she espoused in her latest blog post in early December. And compared to the wider world economy, there might be some truth to it. However, the sheer size of her philanthropy already puts her at almost the same spending level as the Gates Foundation, one of the world’s largest private donors, which spent $8 billion in 2024. Scott has already given away over $26 billion to more than 2,500 organizations in just six years, surpassing the lifetime donations of many donors who started way before her, including Michael Bloomberg, who has given $21.1 billion to date. Devex analyzed Scott’s $7.2 billion and found some interesting results. First, there was a more than twelvefold increase in Scott’s support to nonprofits working in low- and middle-income countries. And second, she is looking to move her money further: Nearly 80 of her recipients are funds and regrantors, which can further spread the impact of her grant giving. All of these suggest that, whether she likes it or not, Scott is becoming an increasingly dominant player in the philanthropic world, warranting a closer look. What do the overall figures say? Our findings show that Scott awarded 186 grants to 182 organizations in 2025, worth $7.2 billion. Three organizations received more than one grant in 2025: ClimateWorks Foundation, which won three awards, and Blue Ventures Conservation and Howard University, which both got two awards. ClimateWorks Foundation and Blue Ventures Conservation received funding for specific initiatives that they implement, as opposed to the rest of the grantees, which received a single unrestricted grant award. Meanwhile, Howard University’s College of Medicine received a separate grant from Scott. We also found that only 63 of the 182 recipients were first-time grantees. The majority were repeat grantees, with 114 organizations receiving their second award from Scott in 2025. Four nonprofits got their third grant in 2025. They were Blue Meridian Partners, Restore Local, TheDream.US, and Upstream USA. Meanwhile, CAMFED, a nonprofit focused primarily on the education of young women in rural areas of Africa, already has four awards to date, worth $105.5 million in total. Lastly, our analysis revealed that of the 186 grant awards, only 107 had complete details, including the grant amount. Their cumulative worth is $3.46 billion, or an average of about $18.6 million per award. The remaining 79 awards have undisclosed funding, but based on the total sum Scott mentioned on her announcement, they should be getting $3.7 billion, or an average of $46.9 million per award. US-focused grantees still got the largest share Scott still spent a significant portion of her money in the U.S., with the data showing she extended financial support to 121 U.S.-focused organizations in 2025. Among them, 71 received $2.2 billion, or 30.5% of the total grants. Their awards ranged from $5 million to $70 million per award. The remaining 50 nonprofits have undisclosed funding. Among those with complete details, Howard University, a historically Black university, received the largest sum of $80 million. Of this, $17 million went to its College of Medicine as a separate grant. Two other nonprofits supporting historically Black universities got $70 million each: the United Negro College Fund and Thurgood Marshall College Fund. The Hispanic Scholarship Fund was also among the top recipients, with $70 million. Fourteen other grantees received at least $50 million. Aside from her 121 U.S.-focused grantees, Scott also provided $62 million to one grantee in Canada, $43 million to two nonprofits working across the U.S and Canada, and one organization, with an undisclosed award, working in the U.S. and across Latin America. Grants for the global south Scott made significant strides in increasing her financial assistance to organizations working in the global south, with 57 nonprofits working in LMICs making it to her list of grantees in 2025. Among them, 29 organizations have complete information, with their cumulative grants amounting to $1.2 billion — 12 times bigger than the $94.1 million the same group received in 2024. This is also Scott’s largest allocation for non-U.S.-focused organizations since she started her philanthropy. The remaining 28 nonprofits have undisclosed grant awards. Although these organizations work in LMICs, many of the top recipients we reviewed are still based in the United States or in other high-income countries, such as Canada and the United Kingdom. Among them, California-based ClimateWorks Foundation emerged as the top grantee, with $130 million. The nonprofit received three grants for three different initiatives: $60 million for the Drive Electric Campaign; $40 million for the Maritime Shipping Program; and $30 million for the Clean Cooling Collaborative. Forests, People, Climate, which is also headquartered in the U.S., ranked next, with $90 million. The nonprofit focuses on stopping and reversing tropical deforestation. Scott also awarded $70 million to Dubai-based Ocean Resilience and Climate Alliance, a five-year collaborative initiative focused on the ocean’s role in the fight against climate change. Of the 57 LMIC-focused grantees, 15 organizations are based in the global south. Five among them have complete information. They are: • $15 million grant to Fundo Casa Socioambiental, a Brazil-based nonprofit providing small grants to local organizations in South Africa • $15 million grant to Kenya-based Maliasili that works towards conservation efforts across Africa • $12 million grant to the Micronesia Conservation Trust, which focuses on the country’s biodiversity, as well as in neighboring small island developing states. • $10 million grant to the South Africa-based Global Fund for Community Foundations, another grassroots grantmaking organization. • $8 million grant to Projeto Saúde e Alegria, a Brazil-based nonprofit serving Amazonian communities in a broad range of sectors, including territorial development, health, and education. The remaining 10 LMICs-based nonprofits with undisclosed funding were: • Foundation for Amazon Sustainability in Brazil • Imagine Worldwide in Malawi • Instituto Socioambiental in Brazil • Last Mile Health in Ghana • myAgro in Senegal • One Acre Fund in Kenya • Pawanka Fund in Nicaragua • PRADAN in India • SELCO Foundation in India • Tiko in South Africa What are Scott’s sectoral priorities? The data included organization-reported focus areas, but many of them work in multiple sectors, making it difficult to exactly gauge how much each of the sectors received. But we counted the number of times a sector is tagged as a focus area, which may be useful in identifying priorities. Overall, we found that 77 organizations have post-secondary or tertiary education as their sole priority or among their focus areas. Climate ranked next among the most-tagged sectors, with 51 grantees listing climate among their focus areas. Livelihoods and workforce development followed, with 45 nonprofits having it among their core sectors. Looking into the list of grantees, we also observed that many of the U.S.-focused recipients are universities or scholarship funds. On the other hand, non-U.S.-focused grantees mostly work in the areas of climate change, conservation, and the environment.