How The Late Toni Morrison Played A Part In Former Student MacKenzie Scott’s Philanthropic Decisions, Which Now Include Billions Donated To HBCUs
Long before she became one of the world’s most generous philanthropists, MacKenzie Scott was a struggling writer learning lessons of compassion and craft from her mentor, the late Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison.
Scott received billions following her 2019 divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Since then, she has donated vast sums to advance Black health care and support schools, food banks, housing, and education initiatives nationwide — including $1.07 billion to Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
According to Stay Inspired News, Scott’s connection to the Black community traces back to her time studying creative writing under Morrison at Princeton University.
Morrison’s mentorship shaped Scott’s voice as a writer and taught her to empathize with people’s struggles and dreams — a perspective that continues to guide her philanthropy. Their correspondence, which includes a 1992 post-college graduation letter where Scott admitted she was struggling to pay rent while waitressing in New York City, has been preserved in Princeton’s Firestone Library as part of the Toni Morrison Papers since 2014.
“MacKenzie was one of the best students I’ve ever had in my creative-writing classes . . . really one of the best,” Morrison shared in a 2013 Vogue interview, per Stay Inspired.
In 1992, Scott applied to the hedge fund D. E. Shaw and was hired after Jeff Bezos, working there at the time, read a phone transcript of Morrison’s recommendation — a moment that changed Scott’s life. On May 25, 2019, she signed the Giving Pledge, committing her fortune to helping others.
“I have no doubt that tremendous value comes when people act quickly on the impulse to give,” Scott wrote in her pledge letter. “No drive has more positive ripple effects than the desire to be of service. There are lots of resources each of us can pull from our safes to share with others — time, attention, knowledge, patience, creativity, talent, effort, humor, compassion.”
She continued, “And sure enough, something greater rises up every time we give: the easy breathing of a friend we sit with when we had other plans, the relief on our child’s face when we share the story of our own mistake, laughter at the well-timed joke we tell to someone who is crying, the excitement of the kids in the school we send books to, the safety of the families who sleep in the shelters we fund. These immediate results are only the beginning. Their value keeps multiplying and spreading in ways we may never know.”
Her mentor Morrison died on Aug. 5, 2019, at age 88, leaving behind a legacy of masterful writing and deep empathy for humanity — one that lives on through Scott’s generosity and compassion. As of November 2025, Scott has donated over $19.25 billion.
“How much or how little money changes hands doesn’t make it philanthropy. Intention and effort make it philanthropy,” Scott wrote in a 2021 personal essay on Medium called “No Dollar Signs This Time.” “If we acknowledge what it all has in common, there will be more of it. That’s why I keep referring to what I’m doing as ‘giving,’ a word still being used to describe what humans have been doing with their time, focus, food, cash, and trust to lift each other up for thousands of years.”
