Charleston’s International African American Museum (IAAM) is among the 286 “high-impact” organizations to receive a combined $2.74 billion from MacKenzie Scott, the philanthropist and ex-wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Scott said the latest round of donations targeted organizations in categories and communities that have been historically underfunded and overlooked.
It’s unknown how much of that total IAAM will receive, but donation amounts do not appear to be uniform across the board.
“I am delighted to see the work of IAAM championed among this group,” said museum president and CEO Tonya Matthews in a statement. “We are humbled to receive such a signal of trust and encouragement.”
Scott and her team looked for organizations working to bridge divides between communities based on race, wealth, sex and more, she said Tuesday in a post on Medium.
“While political pendulums swing back and forth, redistributing and re-concentrating wealth, we can choose to fund organizations with the potential to increase the impact of every dollar and hour donated by others,” Scott wrote.
Organizations sought for donations included higher education institutions; interfaith organizations; arts and cultural institutions; groups with a focus on diverse, local engagement; and nonprofits, which Scott said employ 10% of the nation’s workforce and 63 million volunteers.
We chose to make relatively large gifts to the organizations named below, both to enable their work, and as a signal of trust and encouragement, to them and to others,” Scott wrote. “These are people who have spent years successfully advancing humanitarian aims, often without knowing whether there will be any money in their bank accounts in two months.”
Days before Scott announced her latest round of giving — her third billion-dollar-plus giveaway this year — her ex-husband Jeff Bezos announced he was going on an 11-minute flight to space.
The IAAM is the product of a 20-year project to establish a museum from which to educate the public on the history and culture of Black Americans and the ongoing struggle against institutional racism and inequality.
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