Denver’s Rocky Mountain Prep charter school this week received a surprise gift of $4.5 million from one of the world’s leading philanthropists, MacKenzie Scott.

Scott, author and former wife of Amazon mogul Jeff Bezos, has donated more than $12 billion of her estimated $35.2 billion fortune to more than 1,200 non-profits since July, 2020, according to Forbes.

Tricia Noyola, Rocky Mountain Prep CEO told the Denver Gazette Friday she was completely surprised by a call from Scott’s people a short while ago, and was elated when the money showed up in the charter school’s account this week.

“We haven’t finalized how we will use the funds, but I can assure you that we will continue to take a student-first approach to the decisions we make, ensuring that every dollar directly benefits our incredible scholars and the work that matters most — the work happening in our classrooms every single day,” said Noyola said in a letter to parents and staff Friday.

Rocky Mountain Prep serves more than 1,800 students across the Denver metro area, and provides education to students from 3 years old through 5th grade at four campuses. Noyola said the charter school’s annual budget is about $30 million.

In the “Giving Pledge” letter — something Scott signed in 2019 when she pledged to give away at least half of the fortune she gained in her divorce from her husband of 25 years — she quoted a passage from “The Writing Life,” by Annie Dillard: “Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book… The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better… Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”