MacKenzie Scott’s announcement that she gave roughly $7.2 billion this year and has now donated about $26 billion since 2019 is jaw-dropping — and it cements her place among America’s biggest givers. That sum, reported alongside her own essays about “care,” has pushed her into third place behind Warren Buffett and Bill Gates on lifetime giving totals.
We should celebrate private generosity when it actually helps people, but taxpayers and small-business owners have a right to ask hard questions about how this money is moved and sheltered. Public reporting shows Scott disposed of huge chunks of Amazon stock and appears to be routing donations through donor-advised funds, a mechanism that preserves tax advantages while often delaying public transparency.
Much of Scott’s largesse has flowed to higher education, historically Black colleges and universities, and climate groups — causes that animate the elite coastal consensus and the philanthropy industrial complex. Local leaders and students at HBCUs have undeniably benefited from big gifts, but conservatives are right to point out that the priorities set by billionaire checkbooks don’t always align with the needs of everyday Americans.
There’s nothing wrong with writing big checks, but there is a problem when those checks come with opaque accounting and the tax system is engineered to reward speedier wealth transfers to politically curated causes. Donor-advised funds allow donors to claim tax advantages while postponing actual grants, and that structure deserves scrutiny from Congress and state regulators who care about fairness and transparency.
Context matters: this year also saw massive gifts from other billionaire donors, including multi-billion-dollar pledges to medical research and child nutrition, which underscores how a handful of ultra-wealthy people now shape national priorities. Americans should be grateful for charitable outcomes, but they should also insist that philanthropy not become a backdoor for unelected elites to steer public life without accountability.
Conservatives can—and should—recognize the good when we see it. Scott’s grantmaking has helped institutions that serve vulnerable students and communities, and private charity can complement public policy when it focuses on opportunity, not ideology. Still, we must demand reforms that increase transparency, prevent tax shelters from becoming partisan piggybanks, and ensure donations strengthen civil society rather than deepen the power of a privileged few.
Generosity matters in a free society, but so does the rule of law and equal treatment under the tax code. If Americans are asked to accept the outsized influence of billionaire giving, that acceptance should come with stronger disclosure, tighter rules for donor-advised funds, and a renewed commitment to policies that lift working families instead of simply amplifying the preferences of the super-rich.
