[HN Gopher] Amazon Co-founder Mackenzie quietly gave over $4B to...
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Amazon Co-founder Mackenzie quietly gave over $4B to 384
organizations in 2020
Author : devy
Score : 104 points
Date : 2021-01-09 21:51 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mackenzie-scott.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mackenzie-scott.medium.com)
| one2know wrote:
| In my opinion she should give some of that to the Amazon
| employees on the backs of which the vast fortune was made. Jeff
| and Mackenzie really fucked over the vast majority of people that
| work(ed) there usually through lies about RSU's, firing people
| before 90 days who were expecting health insurance, timing their
| pee breaks, etc.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| Even if I agree that she has made a fortune on the backs of
| Amazon employees, I don't agree with this comment.
|
| Here, MacKenzie Scott has made a choice to give money back to
| causes which support underprivileged people (which will
| doubtless include some of those same Amazon employees), which
| she did not have to.
| grumple wrote:
| Right, it's better than just putting the money into the
| pockets of some hedge fund managers by buying stock.
|
| But definitely worse than Amazon paying a better wage and not
| treating employees like robots.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| > through lies about RSU's
|
| Source?
| one2know wrote:
| Amazon employees only get 5% RSU's the first year, and will
| be pipped before they reach year 2 vesting.
| TheTrotters wrote:
| Quietly? I remember reading multiple articles about it.
| cperciva wrote:
| The giving itself was quiet, probably out of a desire to avoid
| being mobbed with funding requests. Then it was publicized
| after the fact.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| This headline appears to have been written by whoever posted it
| to HN.
| _gtly wrote:
| It's a bit cynical, but you may find Larry David's bit on
| anonymous giving amusing https://youtu.be/De90ozOOquY
| [deleted]
| throwoutttt wrote:
| I guess we know where some of the George Floyd brick pallets came
| from now
| DeafSquid wrote:
| Fake news
| lucideer wrote:
| > _" quietly"_
|
| Is a link to the blog of said co-founder, where she discusses her
| philanthropy.
|
| Her Wikipedia page describes her as "an American novelist and
| philanthropist" and the largest section of that page is entitled
| "Philanthropy".
|
| I don't mean to criticize Mackenzie for this, just the
| unnecessary (and inaccurate) editorializing of the HN post title.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I get your point but this is a different context than how you
| or I might make a charitable donation - this is celebrity
| billionaire land.
|
| There is a difference in this strange other land between
| publishing the donations with some explanations so those
| interested can find out, and the usual way, which involves PR
| pieces, interviews abs dinner plates at a grand a pop.
|
| I mean I had no idea she had done this, yet I watched a big
| robo-ball follow Jeff around a garden.
|
| So yeah, I would think that, in this weird land, that was
| actually, quiet :-)
| dstick wrote:
| No idea why you got downvoted. You're right. Thanks for
| taking the time to elaborate your thoughts.
| escape_goat wrote:
| Hi dang and/or moderators, the title of Ms. Scott's article is
| "384 ways to help" and I think that that is a perfectly good
| link text. I don't fault the submitter for admiring Mackenzie
| Scott but editorializing in links is a problematic practice
| which shouldn't be encouraged.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| Worth noting her name in the link text is also mis-spelled
| (mis-capitalised), and I'm not sure it's appropriate to use
| only her first name.
|
| She goes by MacKenzie Scott.
| grzm wrote:
| The most effective way to contact the mods is through the
| Contact link in the footer.
| valenciarose wrote:
| The quietly is less about communication with the public than it
| is communication with the non-profits about the gifts. No
| weeks/months-long crafting of the gift announcement message. No
| extended negotiation about how the gift is going to be used.
| Hint, right now every non-profit is hurting for unrestricted
| genop money.
|
| It's incredibly refreshing.
| giovannibonetti wrote:
| What does genop mean? I couldn't find it on Google
| thisiszilff wrote:
| A guess: general operations
| obrajesse wrote:
| I believe it means 'general operations' - Ms Scott's gifts
| have been unrestricted, with atypically light reporting
| requirements. Basically, she's trusting the non-profit
| recipients of her donations to know how to spend their
| money to accomplish their missions and isn't making them
| bend over backwards to appease her.
| theklr wrote:
| General operations if I'm presuming jargon. Which I think
| is the bigger deal with her donations than anything else.
| tmpxgdqrcKFuG wrote:
| _Hey, Mrs Scott! Whatcha goin to do? Whatcha goin to do to make
| our dreams come true?!_
| aardvark1 wrote:
| Cofounder????
| mv4 wrote:
| Yes.
| jiofih wrote:
| Source? It seems Bezos was a solo founder.
| aardvark1 wrote:
| She was an employee
| [deleted]
| economusty wrote:
| Much better than giving it to the various governments, kudos to
| her for giving it away.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| In May 2019, Mackenzie Scott signed the Giving Pledge [0], a
| charitable giving campaign launched in 2010 with the announcement
| of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett as members and evangelistic
| founders [1].
|
| Almost none of the signees have as of yet made significant
| progress towards upholding their pledge to give away half of
| their wealth, instead only accumulating more of it. Since the
| pledge was created in 2010, the wealth of the donors has not
| decreased but has instead increased from a combined $376 billion
| in 2010 to a combined $734 billion in 2020 [2]. Many who have
| made significant donations, have done so to private foundations,
| which often pay salaries to their family members and have no
| obligation by law to actually spend the wealth on active charity
| organisations.[citation needed]
|
| Donations in general are a topic of public debate, in part,
| because in many countries they are tax-deductible, which means
| donations reduce tax obligations for individuals, and tax revenue
| for government.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacKenzie_Scott
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Pledge
|
| [2] https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#5f078cfc3d78
| woah wrote:
| Co-founder? I wasn't aware of that
| Darmody wrote:
| Yes. She didn't get the money only for being "the wife" as many
| people think.
|
| She worked at Amazon and she is one of the people that made the
| company succeed.
| ffggvv wrote:
| why do we al have to pretend this is true. as if she would've
| been hired their if she wasn't married to the founder
|
| jesus political correctness is sad
| [deleted]
| andreilys wrote:
| Sure, and there were many early employees at Google that made
| it succeed.
|
| Those early employees however are not called co-founders.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| But everything she got in the divorce settlement would be for
| being "the spouse". Presumably her compensation from the
| early days at amazon were just considered her personal
| assets.
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| A married couple in a common property state doesn't have
| personal assets.
| didibus wrote:
| I think it's more complicated then that. For example, me
| and my wife bought a car together, but it's only in my
| name. Since we're married, it doesn't matter that it be
| only in my name, we both own it 100/100 based on our
| marriage contract. So we don't even bother putting
| everything in each other's name.
|
| I suspect Amazon was a similar afair. They both quit their
| job and moved city to start and work on Amazon. When the
| company began, she was working on it with Bezos, both
| together.
|
| It's possible that they then decided similarly not to
| bother with adding her name to the company officially,
| since as they were married that doesn't really matter. In
| fact, IANAL, but I'd suspect it might be complicated to do
| so, since by your marriage you already have a contract with
| one another, and as a contractual business partner you'd
| have another contract, and I wouldn't be surprised if that
| gets messy as both contract can easily conflict and the
| marriage contract has special status.
|
| So I think it's fair to consider her a co-founder, in that
| she acted as one, took all the same risks, quit her job,
| moved city, worked on starting the company, put her
| financials at risk and invested her own money into it, etc.
| Even though she's not really a co-founder as registered in
| the company itself.
| earthtobishop wrote:
| If she didn't get the money for being Jeff's wife then how
| did she get the money.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| She doesn't call herself "cofounder", nor has any news outlet,
| PR piece, or anything like that. I assume the submitter here
| just editorialized the title a bit for attention.
| [deleted]
| mushufasa wrote:
| I didn't realize this either, so I looked up her wikipedia
| page:
|
| "In 1993, Scott and Bezos were married, and in 1994, they both
| left D. E. Shaw, moved to Seattle, and started Amazon. Scott
| was one of Amazon's first employees, and was heavily involved
| in Amazon's early days, working on the company's name, business
| plan, accounts and shipping early orders.[4][8] She also
| negotiated the company's first freight contract.[8] When Amazon
| began to succeed, Scott took a less involved role in the
| business, preferring to focus on her family and literary
| career.[4]"
| andreilys wrote:
| _Scott was one of Amazon 's first employees_
|
| Employee != co-founder.
|
| I don't think anyone thinks of Mackenzie as an Amazon co-
| founder (nor have I read anywhere other than this
| editorialized title).
|
| That's not to play down her involvement and contribution to
| Amazon in its early days, but it's disingenuous to call her a
| co-founder.
| dominotw wrote:
| > but it's disingenuous to call her a co-founder.
|
| looks like the submitter called here that, possibly to
| create a flamewar like this.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Seems like an irrelevant thing to argue about. The
| submitter clearly set it up to create engagement on the
| submission. I hate to have to participate and therefore
| perpetuate it but we're all suckers for having reacted to
| the bait like this. Maybe knowing we're suckers will stop
| us from being suckers the next time a submitter pulls this.
| casefields wrote:
| This happens on Reddit too. If you post something
| slightly incorrect or even a misspelling, it'll give it
| that first flurry of engagement which gives it a better
| chance of striking gold.
| [deleted]
| supertrope wrote:
| https://twitter.com/humantransit/status/1344334794008629249
| greatgirl wrote:
| I recommend the title of this be changed to "Mackenzie Scott gave
| over $4B to 384 organizations in 2020"
| bra-ket wrote:
| With all that charity money we, as a species, could've
| established Moon and Mars colonies ten times over.
|
| Instead it's sunk into giant black hole of bureaucracy and
| consulting fees.
| astrange wrote:
| Sometimes you can't do things with money. Going to Mars is one
| of them.
|
| Although Musk and Bezos are both trying, so you should be happy
| about that.
| grumple wrote:
| $4B is not even close to enough to do either of those things.
| The Apollo program cost $283 billion in inflation-adjusted
| dollars.
| bra-ket wrote:
| I'm talking about gazilions in charity which goes to waste,
| with that $4B being a very small part of.
| jiofih wrote:
| And how exactly would a moon colony help feed those people
| needing charity here on earth?
| bra-ket wrote:
| they should get a job
| jiofih wrote:
| Technology improves though. You can expect SpaceX, and maybe
| BO, to have spent <20B once we get there.
| jiofih wrote:
| Bezos has invested around ~5B already in Blue Origin, so your
| expectations may need some calibration.
| fortran77 wrote:
| How quiet is it, if we all know about it? Good for her! Brava, in
| fact, but "quietness" isn't part of this.
|
| I have no doubt that this was a sincere move, from her heart.
| miked85 wrote:
| The title to this post should be "Mackenzie Scott gave over $4B
| to 384 organizations in 2020" or "384 Ways to Help"
| Barrin92 wrote:
| _The result over the last four months has been $4,158,500,000 in
| gifts to 384 organizations across all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and
| Washington D.C. Some are filling basic needs: food banks,
| emergency relief funds, and support services for those most
| vulnerable. Others are addressing long-term systemic inequities
| that have been deepened by the crisis: debt relief, employment
| training, credit and financial services for under-resourced
| communities, education for historically marginalized and
| underserved people, civil rights advocacy groups, and legal
| defense funds that take on institutional discrimination._
|
| I love that she's giving the money to small organisations
| apparently with no strings attached and where cash is needed.
| Seems great in contrast to the paternalistic micromanagement on
| issues with questionable efficacy that so many other
| philanthropists engage in.
| cafard wrote:
| She has given a pile to HBCUs. The Washington Post listed 2020
| gifts to colleges and universities in the area last week, and
| she gave tens of millions to each of Morgan State, Bowie State,
| and University of Maryland Eastern Shore in Maryland. I believe
| she gave a bunch to Howard, and I did read that she gave a lot
| to Hampton University.
| mushufasa wrote:
| It's great to cut the red tape -- donors complain about how so
| many nonprofits have such bureaucracy diverting funds from the
| mission, while at the same time requiring extensive disclosures
| that necessitate said bureaucracy.
|
| Her giving seems focused on direct relief. If you had to divide
| philanthropy into just two camps, you could consider one camp
| is direct relief of societal symptoms and the other is advocacy
| to fix the underlying societal problems. For example, giving a
| man a fish to eat versus teaching fishing lessons.
|
| It's easy to think that direct relief is ineffective compared
| to systemic change. When you get into the details, though,
| implementing societal change is a lot more complicated. You
| have the Koch brothers and George Soros both trying to improve
| societies through public advocacy, in opposite directions, with
| lots of failed projects along the way. While direct relief may
| not create long-term solutions, the real world benefits are
| more directly measurable.
|
| In a plague year (followed by new crises in the new year),
| regardless of critiques of her approach, I hope we can all
| appreciate her compassionate giving.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| another benefit of her decision is not forcing small 501Cs to
| produce and track down longggg grant proposals. I know a ton of
| <1mm 3-5 people orgs that have someone full time doing grant
| writing. That costs significant money.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Reminds me of this:
|
| http://m.nautil.us/blog/-larry-david-and-the-game-theory-of-...
| ffggvv wrote:
| "cofounder" lol
| meesterdude wrote:
| thats an average of 10,416,666.67, or $10.41 Million per
| organization
| Kiro wrote:
| ... per day?
| b34r wrote:
| Per organization
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| meesterdude wrote:
| thanks - corrected
| meesterdude wrote:
| $28,538.81 per organization, per day. :)
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