MacKenzie Scott has now given more than $1 billion to historically Black colleges

MacKenzie Scott's giving to historically Black colleges and universities has passed $1 billion, and none of it came with instructions.

The threshold was crossed by a $42 million gift to Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina, made on the school's Founders Day this spring. It was the second time Scott had given to the institution, which received $15 million from her in 2020.

The money is a fraction of what she has distributed since 2020. Scott has given about $26 billion to thousands of organisations working on community development, health, disaster recovery and the environment, and Bloomberg still estimates her fortune at around $37 billion.

What separates her giving from most philanthropy at that scale is the absence of conditions.

Scott's gifts are unrestricted, which means recipients decide what to do with the money rather than spending it against a donor's specified programme. Institutions have used her funds for endowments, scholarships, faculty recruitment and building work that had been deferred for years. Anne Marie Dougherty, chief executive of the Bob Woodruff Foundation, has described the approach as trust-based philanthropy. Noni Ramos, who runs Housing Trust Silicon Valley, has said Scott's donations avoid the lengthy applications, restrictions and reporting requirements attached to conventional funding, letting organisations move quickly.

The scale at individual schools has been substantial. Howard University, the alma mater of Thurgood Marshall, Toni Morrison and former Vice President Kamala Harris, received $80 million in November 2025, among the largest gifts in its 158-year history, following $40 million in 2020. Morgan State University and Prairie View A&M have each received $63 million in the most recent round, on top of $40 million and $50 million respectively in 2020. Several schools have described her gifts as the largest single donations they have ever recorded.

She has also funded the sector's two main scholarship organisations, giving $70 million each to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and the United Negro College Fund during 2025.

The timing places the money against a shifting political backdrop. Federal support for diversity-focused programmes and institutions has been rolled back under the Trump administration, and Scott's HBCU giving forms part of a wider philanthropic strategy that has become more pronounced as that has happened.

Other wealthy Americans have followed. Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan, and his wife Judith announced a $12 million commitment across twelve HBCUs in August.

Scott has traced her own motivation to two episodes from her student years. A dentist treated her without charge after seeing her hold a broken tooth in place with denture glue, and a college roommate lent her $1,000 when she was close to dropping out in her second year. Writing in December, she argued that the effects of such acts are impossible to calculate in advance, and that the value of non-transactional giving has long been underestimated because its benefits are hard to measure.

She has been giving away her fortune since her 2019 divorce from the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.