Goodwill of Central and Coastal Va. receives $10M gift

Donation from Amazon billionaire MacKenzie Scott will help job-readiness training

Published December 15, 2020 by Sydney Lake

Goodwill of Central and Coastal Virginia announced Tuesday it has received a $10 million grant from novelist MacKenzie Scott, who has donated more than $4.2 billion across 384 organizations during the past four months. Scott is the former wife of Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos. 

The gift will help Goodwill provide job-readiness training to people in Central Virginia and Coastal Virginia. 

“We are extremely grateful for this extraordinary gift,” Goodwill Board Chair Maria P. Rasmussen said in a statement. “Our mission is simple – ‘Changing lives, helping people (particularly the underserved populations) help themselves through the power of work.’ So many in the public know of our retail stores, but are not aware of all that we do. This gift will enhance our visibility and create new opportunities to do more for underserved populations.” 

Scott, who was married to Bezos from 2013 to 2019, authored “The Testing of Luther Albright” and “Traps.” She also founded anti-bullying organization Bystander Revolution in 2014. With her 2019 divorce from Bezos, she became the third-wealthiest woman in the world in April 2019, according to Forbes. As of Dec. 15, she has an estimated net worth of $60.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

She has donated nearly $6 billion to charities during 2020.

“We are very grateful for this extraordinarily generous gift at a critical point in time when people need jobs,” Goodwill CEO Mark Barth said. “With an established track record of providing workforce development services to the community, Goodwill works with jobseekers to provide training and skills they need to work within the organization or to move on to other employment opportunities.”

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