Jeff Bezos ex-wife MacKenzie Scott’s ‘Donation Playbook’ inspires Evan Spiegel’s big Gift

Snap founder Evan Spiegel’s recent multimillion-dollar gift to erase medical debt follows a donation style popularised by MacKenzie Scott, according to a Times of India report. The piece says the model centres on fast, large-scale giving to high-impact nonprofits, rather than slowly distributing funds through traditional grantmaking.

Spiegel and his wife, Miranda Kerr, reportedly donated enough to wipe out $550 million in medical debt for more than 261,000 Californians, with the money directed to Undue Medical Debt. This move is part of a growing ‘donation playbook' in billionaire charity that emphasises direct relief for people under financial strain.

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Scott’s influence

MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife, is described as the key figure behind this approach. She has donated more than $26 billion to over 2,700 non-profit organisations through her Yield Giving platform, helping normalise extremely large, low-visibility donations to mission-driven groups. By leveraging a high-impact “donation playbook” for effective nonprofits, Spiegel is emulating the strategy that transformed Scott into the most prolific philanthropist of her generation.

Spiegel adopts MacKenzie Scott's charitable approach

Snap co-founder Evan Spiegel has donated to Undue Medical Debt, a non-profit working to erase medical debt for struggling families, following a charitable approach popularised by MacKenzie Scott. The donation will help clear medical debt for vulnerable residents across California, with San Diego and Los Angeles counties expected to receive the largest share of the relief. Scott had previously donated $80 million to the organisation between 2020 and 2022, helping it eliminate more than $40 billion in medical debt across all 50 US states. Spiegel's strategy mirrors Scott's model of supporting organisations with large, flexible funding to maximise their impact. 

“The scale of this gift to Californians is truly astonishing, unburdening over a quarter million families of over half a billion dollars of unpayable medical debt,” said Allison Sesso, president and CEO of Undue Medical Debt.

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How the nonprofit wipes out medical debt

Undue Medical Debt works by buying unpaid medical debt from hospitals at heavily discounted prices and then cancelling it instead of collecting payments from patients. Hospitals often sell unpaid debt to collectors for a fraction of its original value, allowing the nonprofit to erase large amounts of debt at a relatively low cost. From mid-July, eligible Californians began receiving letters confirming that their medical debt had been cleared. The initiative is aimed at helping people whose medical bills threaten their access to healthcare and financial stability.

A Wider Philanthropic Shift

Scott’s influence extends beyond the size of her donations and into the very structure of modern giving. By backing nonprofits that can distribute aid quickly, her model has encouraged other wealthy donors to move away from highly curated, long-term funding programmes and toward immediate intervention.

For Spiegel and Kerr, the donation also signals a growing preference among prominent philanthropists for practical, outcome-driven giving. In that sense, Scott’s blueprint may be proving as influential as her billions.