Billionaire MacKenzie Scott is sharing the wealth once again. She recently donated $70 million to the United Negro College Fund. The UNCF is the country’s largest provider of scholarships to minority students who attend HBCUs. This donation is one of the largest single donations made by Scott and one of the first to be officially announced this year.

According to an article by the Associated Press, Scott only shares her donations on her website. Once recipients receive their donations, she then makes the news public.

“This extraordinary gift is a powerful vote of confidence in HBCUs and in the work of UNCF,” the nonprofit’s President and CEO Dr. Michael L. Lomax told The Associated Press in a statement. “It provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity for our member institutions to build permanent assets that will support students and campuses for decades to come.”

The UNCF serves about 37 HBCUs across the country; Lomax says that Scott’s donation will go towards the organization’s pooled endowment. The UNCF has a goal of setting up a $370 million fund to ensure that each HBCU receives $10 million that would pay out approximately 4% annually. Increasing endowments at HBCUs has been a long-time goal for the UNCF due to the fact that HBCUs fall behind non-HBCUs when it comes to endowments by 70%.

The UNCF has a much more extensive goal of raising $1 billion to help bridge the gap in funding disparities that often plague HBCUs. This is not the first time that Scott has donated some of her fortune to HBCUs. Back in 2020, Scott donated millions of dollars to several HBCUs, including Virginia State University, Hampton University, Howard University, Morehouse College, Spelman College, Tuskegee University, and Xavier University of Louisiana. She also gave the UNCF $10 million during this time as well. This string of donations was the result of a Giving Pledge Scott signed in 2018 after divorcing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Since her divorce from Bezos, Scott has given about $19.2 billion in gifts to various groups. According to Forbes, her current net worth is $34 billion.

Despite her surprisingly large donations, Scott doesn’t have any restrictions on how the funds can be used. In some cases when institutions or organizations receive large donations, they come with a list of stipulations for how the money can be used. The UNCF is extremely grateful for Scott’s sizable donation and hopes that her kind acts inspire other philanthropists to follow suit.

“We are deeply grateful for MacKenzie Scott’s continued support,” Lomax said. “By entrusting UNCF to decide how best to use these funds, she affirms that HBCUs merit investment at this scale, and her generosity will strengthen our member institutions and provide pathways to success for tomorrow’s changemakers.”