Every time a MacKenzie Scott grantee talks about receiving one of her multimillion-dollar gifts, there is always a hint of the same bashfulness, the same reverence, and the same glee.

Their eyes light up. They blush a little. There’s a giggle here and there.

“It’s disarming,” said Michael Lomax, head of the United Negro College Fund, or UNCF, from the moment you get the call from her team. It starts with a message of gratitude from Scott, who became a multi-billionaire overnight after her divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2019. Then, the call pivots to a few logistics, and finally, the reveal of a large, generous gift that seems far too spontaneous to be true.

One surprising thing

I knew that MacKenzie Scott was a novelist, but I had no idea how far her lore went with her forme

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