Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott delivered her most prolific year of giving in 2025, donating a total of $7 billion across a wide range of organizations and bringing her overall contributions to more than $26 billion in just the past few years. Scott's fortune stems from the Amazon stake she received in her 2019 divorce from the company's founder, Jeff Bezos, and that same year she signed the Giving Pledge, publicly committing to give the majority of her wealth to charity.

A central focus of her philanthropy has been higher education, including public institutions that lost funding during the Trump administration as well as historically Black colleges and universities. California has emerged as a particular hotspot for her giving: according to EdSource, Scott has contributed a total of $461 million to public education institutions in the state, with the donations spread across just four years between 2021 and 2025.

In all, the donations went to 16 different institutions, with an average gift size of about $28.8 million.

California State University, Northridge (CSUN)—one of 23 campuses in the largest four-year public university system in the United States—has received the highest cumulative amount from Scott at $103 million, including a $40 million gift in 2021 and a $63 million gift in 2025. The timing mattered for campuses navigating budget shortfalls: CSUN itself faced a $16.3 million deficit, making the unrestricted, no-strings nature of Scott's gifts especially valuable at the time.

As is Scott's philanthropic custom, the donations are unrestricted, meaning the universities can use the money as they choose without oversight from her organization, Yield Giving. The approach reflects a broader shift in philanthropy toward trust-based giving, in which funders provide general operating support and cede spending decisions to recipients rather than tying grants to specific programs and reporting requirements. Unrestricted gifts of this size remain rare in public higher education, where large donations are more typically earmarked for buildings, named programs, or endowments.

"MacKenzie Scott's increased investment reflects confidence in both our mission and in our demonstrated ability to deliver transformational outcomes for students," Robert Taylor, chair of the CSUN Foundation Board of Directors, said in a statement at the time of the 2025 gift.

The CSUN gifts also fit a broader pattern for Scott, who tends to donate to diverse organizations. Of CSUN's 36,000 students, about 70% are first-generation college students and 60% come from historically underrepresented groups.

A philosophy of giving without strings

Scott also made two donations to UC Merced: a $20 million gift in 2021 and a subsequent $38 million gift in 2025. Those funds went toward student success initiatives, faculty research programs, and capital projects. UC Merced, the University of California system's newest campus—opened in 2005 and the only UC campus located in the San Joaquin Valley—largely serves first-generation college students and has received the second-largest cumulative total from Scott in the state over the past four years, at $58 million.

The UC Merced gift came hot on the heels of a $50 million donation to California State University, East Bay—a gift the school called "transformational." And as with essentially all of Scott's other gifts, it was the school, not Scott herself, that made the plan for how to use the funding. The university directed the money toward initiatives including student success, career outcomes, expanding paid internship opportunities, and creating and expanding a permanent endowment. CSU East Bay, a public institution enrolling roughly 13,000 to 15,000 students, is known as one of the more ethnically diverse universities in the country.

Scott has articulated her approach publicly. In a 2024 essay published on her Yield Giving blog, she wrote that she prefers to donate to "mission-aligned ventures" and to "generally undercapitalized groups like women and people of color."

"In this way, the money can help address these issues twice," she wrote, "first by advancing economic mobility and unlocking the innovation and social benefit that comes from incorporating diverse needs and perspectives in the world being constructed around us, and next in the hands of experienced non-profit teams creating value through their transformative models of care and change."

Scott's California giving has not been limited to universities. Her grants reached community colleges from Pasadena to Porterville and four K-12 school districts, including a $20 million gift to Fresno Unified School District in 2022. About 90% of her California education gifts, however, went to higher education.

The unrestricted model has not been entirely free of complications. In Santa Barbara, where City College received a $20 million gift in 2021, the college's foundation disclosed in early 2026 that about $10.5 million had been spent on its Promise Program without board authorization, prompting the trustees to open an investigation. Because Scott's gifts carry no spending conditions or reporting requirements, stewardship of the money rests with each recipient's own governance—the dynamic at the heart of the Santa Barbara inquiry.

Source: Fortune