The 12 months of 2025 added up to a headline year for billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. She donated more than $7 billion, bringing her total donations since 2020 to $26 billion and more than 2,700 gifts. This makes her one of the most generous philanthropists alongside fellow billionaires Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, and Warren Buffett.
Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has a current net worth of about $40 billion, most of which she gained from her 2019 divorce from Bezos. Many of her 2025 donations went to causes focused on DEI, disaster recovery, and higher education. But one gift she made last year has sparked some debate.
According to a Dec. 9 blog post written by Scott, her philanthropic organization Yield Giving donated to Solidaire Network, which says it “nurtures relationships between social movements and members to create regenerative systems rooted in love and justice.” This means in practice that the network has funded organizations including Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), the US Palestinian Community Network, and the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), according to tax filings and press releases from the Solidaire Network.
The progressive funding hub that distributes grants to left-wing activist groups received $5 million from Scott in 2025, and $10 million in 2021, according to Yield Giving. But SJP and AMP — two organizations receiving funding from Solidaire Network — face investigations in both the House and Senate for allegedly coordinating with terror group Hamas to start anti-Israel protests in the U.S.
Since the attacks on Israel by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s fierce and controversial response, pro-Palestine protests have erupted globally, splitting traditional left-wing interest groups. While Palestinian freedom has emerged as a cause celebre for leftist civil-rights groups, more center-left voices have criticized at least some aspects of the protests as anti-semitic or even affiliated with Hamas, arguably conflating the issue of Palestinian statehood with support for the militant group that runs the Gaza strip.
The Committee on Oversight and Accountability “is particularly concerned that organizations promulgating pro-Hamas propaganda and engaging in illegal activities at institutions of higher education might be receiving funding or other support from foreign or domestic sources which support the aims of Hamas or other foreign terrorist organizations,” according to a letter dated May 29, 2024 sent from the committee to Osama Abuirshaid, executive director of AMP.
U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) in September also asked the FBI to investigate what he calls the “virulently antisemitic” PYM, after its leader Aisha Nizar called on supporters to disrupt the U.S. F-35 fighter jet supply chain.
“Nizar’s statements constitute direct incitement of violence against U.S. national security interests by advocating for actions against the men and women who build the F-35 and seeking to imperil the delivery of one of the nation’s most strategic assets,” Cotton said in a statement.
Solidaire Network, SJP, AMP, and Yield Giving did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
To be sure, Solidaire Network also supports other progressive organizations focused on racial and gender equality, as well as climate and economic justice causes. Scott was also among more than 280 donors to Solidaire Network in 2021.
“Funding social movements while transforming our own relationship to wealth is clearly the way to go for philanthropy,” according to the Solidaire Network. “MacKenzie’s generous, no-strings-attached gift honors our bold ambitions for our collective work.” Around the same time, Solidaire Network had just deployed multimillion-dollar grants through its Black Liberation Pooled Fund, its Movement Protection Fund, and its Movement Infrastructure Fund.
Because Scott’s gifts are unrestricted — meaning the donation can be used at the discretion of the grantee — there’s no concrete evidence that Scott’s 2021 or 2025 donations went directly to SJP or AMP.
On Jan. 30, 2024, Solidaire Network also announced it had launched a Unity & Power Fund to support the “movement for a permanent ceasefire and against Islamophobia and antisemitism.” SJP and AMP are largely connected to “Palestinian freedom,” and uncompromising stances against Israel.
“We need more philanthropic partners to show up during these flashpoints, and we also need their longer-term support to grow and sustain our work beyond this crisis moment,” Stacey Krueger of Palestine Legal said in a statement. “We are only able to do this work because of the multi-year funding we have received through committed partners like Solidaire Network.”
Although some have criticized Scott’s donation to the Solidaire Network, she’s also been widely recognized as one of the most profound philanthropists in the past few years. She’s made a real difference for DEI-focused organizations, as well as others focused on higher education, veterans, social justice, disaster relief, and the climate. For example, Scott donated $80 million to Howard University last fall, and the university said the gift had come at an “opportune time” as the federal government shutdown delayed annual federal appropriations the school receives to support student success, academic programming, research, and university and Howard University Hospital operations.
Scott has also credited her inspiration for giving to the generosity of her college roommade, who loaned her $1,000 so she wouldn’t have to drop out of school, and her dentist who offered her free dental work after he saw her using denture glue to secure a broken tooth in college.
“Generosity and kindness engage the same pleasure centers in the brain as sex, food, and receiving gifts, and they improve our health and long-term happiness as well,” Scott wrote in a December blog post. “The peace-fostering byproducts of one unexpected act of kindness toward a stranger of different background or beliefs might inspire a beneficial chain reaction that goes on for years.”
