Jeff Bezos ex-wife MacKenzie Scott helped write a ‘donation playbook’ for Snap founder

Snap co-founder Evan Spiegel and his wife, supermodel Miranda Kerr, recently made a multimillion-dollar donation that will wipe out $550 million in medical debt for over 261,000 Californians. Interestingly, this sophisticated philanthropic model was pioneered by MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos ex-wife, who has donated more than $26 billion to over 2,700 non-profit organisations through her platform, Yield Giving. By leveraging a high-impact “donation playbook” to effective nonprofits, Spiegel is emulating the strategy that transformed Scott into the most prolific philanthropist of her generation.

Snap founder Evan Spiegel is following the Scott modelThe donation was made to Undue Medical Debt, a nonprofit organisation that gained national prominence largely through early, substantial investments from MacKenzie Scott. The massive debt relief effort will target vulnerable residents across the state, with San Diego and Los Angeles counties receiving the largest shares of assistance.Scott donated a combined $80 million to the organization between 2020 and 2022, helping the once-scrappy nonprofit abolish over $40 billion in medical debt across all 50 states. Spiegel’s strategy mimics Scott’s signature approach: identify scalable organisations, provide massive, unrestricted capital, and leverage unique market opportunities for maximum impact.“The scale of this gift to Californians is truly astonishing, unburdening over a quarter million families of over half a billion dollars of un-payable medical debt,” said Allison Sesso, president and CEO of Undue Medical Debt.The unique way of abolishing medical debtThe mechanism that enables this exponential impact lies at the intersection of distressed debt markets and American healthcare dysfunction. Hospitals routinely sell uncollectible patient debt to collectors in bulk portfolios for pennies on the dollar. Undue Medical Debt enters this market as a bulk buyer, acquiring these portfolios at the same steep discounts. However, instead of trying to collect the money, the organisation permanently abolishes the debt.Starting in mid-July, eligible Californians began receiving letters informing them that their medical debt has been erased. The relief is targeted toward residents whose medical debt threatens access to essential care and economic stability.