44 United States The Economist November 20th 2021
own. The approach she has settled for in
volves spraying funds across relatively
small organisations working on a wide
range of concerns, including racial and
gender equality.
A good chunk of Ms Scott’s gifts have
gone to local groups in America, such as
food banks and ymcas. Bloomberg News
sent a survey to the recipients of all 786
gifts and got responses from 270. They
found that half, excluding colleges and
universities, have fewer than 50 employ
ees. For nearly 90% of them, Ms Scott’s do
nation is the largest they have ever re
ceived. Contrast that with the Gates Foun
dation, which has handed about 30% of its
total funding over the past two decades to
ten big international groups, including the
World Health Organisation; Gavi, the vac
cine alliance; and the Global Fund to Fight
aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
The second step is deciding how to dish
out money. Here, Ms Scott’s decision to
make unrestricted grants is particularly
popular with beneficiaries. The leaders of
nonprofit organisations grumble that do
nors too often tie money to specific pro
jects, leaving them struggling to finance
daytoday operations. Onethird of
groups that received funds from Ms Scott
are using the money to hire more people
and over a fifth plan to invest in technolo
gy, according to the Bloomberg poll.
Ms Scott likes to fund people with per
sonal experience of the problems they are
trying to solve. The Interfaith Youth Core,
for example, which received a $6m gift,
was founded by Eboo Patel, an Indian
American Ismaili Muslim. The Chicago
based nonprofit has decided to use some
of the money to launch an online maga
zine that writes about subjects such as Jew
ish baseball players and voodoo festivals in
Haiti. Implicit in Ms Scott’s unfenced giv
ing, Mr Patel says, is a recognition that the
person with the money doesn’t necessarily
know best. “It makes the recipient feel
honoured and dignified,” he says.
The third step is how to evaluate what
organisations do with the money. Ms Scott
has said little about this, but here too,
grantees say, she takes a lighttouch ap
proach. One, the National Centre for Fam
ily Philanthropy, has been asked to submit
a “simple and brief” report every year for
the next three years that lays out what the
organisation is up to. There is no template
for that report and no effort to advise the
organisation along the way. Ms Scott has
coined a term for this approach: “seeding
by ceding”.
Whether it was her intention or not, Ms
Scott has issued a challenge to the bureau
cratic, topdown model that has domin
ated American philanthropy for decades. It
already seems to be influencing other rich
people. Ms Scott’s exhusband, for exam
ple, is chided for refusing to sign the Giving Pledge and being slow to make dona
tions. But when Mr Bezos landed back on
Earth after his first trip into space earlier
this year, he announced a £200m gift that
was a surprise to the recipients and came
in the form of unrestricted grants. “No bu
reaucracy,” he said.
None of this is to say that Ms Scott has
found some magic formula. In pursuit of
discretion, she forgoes transparency. She
has kept her advisers secret, so nonprofit
leaders eager to get on her radar have no
way to contact her, aside from comment
ing on her blog. There are so many con art
ists pretending to dole out cash on her be
half that Ms Scott’s Twitter bio directs vic
timstoa FederalBureauofInvestigation
complaintspage.Andbecausesheisgiving
asanindividual,shedoesn’tfacethesamereporting requirements as a foundation.
Rob Reich at Stanford University points
out that this opacity is rare among big do
nors. “It is insulting to democratic citizens
because of the kind of power she wields,”
he thinks.
Of course, Ms Scott’s strategy could
change. She is just getting started with her
philanthropy. Even as she announced her
first round of grants last year, she vowed
“to keep at it until the safe is empty”.
That could be more difficult than it
sounds. The source of her fortune is a 4%
stake in Amazon she received as part of the
divorce settlement in April 2019. Shares in
the ecommerce giant have rallied some
95%sincethen.Ms Scott’s safe is fuller
nowthanit waswhenshebegan shovelling
moneyoutofthedoor.nTheRittenhousetrialProvoking questions
T
he trialof Kyle Rittenhouse, an 18
yearold from Illinois who killed two
people after a Black Lives Matter protest in
Kenosha, a small city in Wisconsin, last
August, ended much as it began: with peo
ple pointing guns. In the concluding argu
ments, both Thomas Binger, the lead pros
ecutor, and Mark Richards, the lead de
fence lawyer, took Mr Rittenhouse’s rifle
out of its evidence box to make their
points. “He raises his left hand, to the gun,
and points”, explained Mr Binger, aiming
the firearm (which he had checked was un
loaded) at the courtroom. “That is what
provokes this entire incident.” Later, Mr
Richards also took the gun out to show
how, in his view, Mr Rittenhouse did not
shoot Joseph Rosenbaum, the first victim,
in the way the state contended.
Such were the details on which jurors
had to decide in the case of Mr Ritten
house. On November 18th, as The Economist
was published, jurors were still deliberat
ing on the charges against him, which in
clude intentional homicide. The lawyers
were arguing over video evidence, with the
defence having requested a mistrial. The
trial, which has taken over two weeks,
highlights deep divisions among Ameri
cans over gun ownership and what consti
tutes acceptable selfdefence.
Most of the facts of the case were well
known long before any witness took the
stand. After a night of rioting that followed
the shooting by police of a black man, Ja
cob Blake, Mr Rittenhouse, who was 17 at
the time, travelled to Kenosha to volunteerto defend businesses from looters. He took
with him an ar15 style semiautomatic ri
fle he had paid a friend, Dominick Black, to
purchase for him (he was too young to buy
it himself ). A little before midnight, he be
came separated from the group he had
joined and ended up being chased by Jo
seph Rosenbaum, a troubled 36yearold,
who he shot four times. He then tried to
flee and, having fallen over, shot two more
people who ran after him, killing one, An
thony Huber, who had been hitting him
with a skateboard, and injuring another,
Gaige Grosskreutz, who had been ap
proaching him with a gun in hand. K ENOSHA
More juries will be asked to settle tricky questions about self-defenceRittenhouse rules