Melinda French Gates announced on Tuesday that she is planning to grant $1 billion over the next two years to programs and people working on women’s and family issues. She highlighted the need to fund reproductive initiatives in the U.S. following the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision that gutted abortion protections.
“While I have long focused on improving contraceptive access overseas, in the post-Dobbs era, I now feel compelled to support reproductive rights here at home,” French Gates said in an op-ed in The New York Times. “For too long, a lack of money has forced organizations fighting for women’s rights into a defensive posture while the enemies of progress play offense. I want to help even the match.”
The news come two weeks after French Gates announced her resignation from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a Seattle-based philanthropic effort that she helped launch nearly 25 years ago. She left the organization with $12.5 billion for her own initiatives as part of her divorce agreement with Bill Gates.
French Gates is using Pivotal Ventures, her independent company created in 2015, to begin deploying her newly committed $1 billion. Pivotal provided some additional details on where the funding is going.
- French Gates is issuing $200 million in grants to U.S. groups focused on women’s rights. That includes the Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal group advocating for abortion, contraception and other rights; National Women’s Law Center, which advocates for gender equity; National Domestic Workers Alliance, representing home care workers, nannies and house cleaners; and States United Democracy Center, a group working for fair, free elections.
- Twelve people globally whose work French Gates admires will receive $20 million each to distribute as grants to others. The dozen include former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, filmmaker Ava DuVernay, Olympic athlete Allyson Felix, and Crystal Echo Hawk, an advocate for Native American peoples and issues.
- This fall, French Gates will launch a $250 million global initiative focused on the mental and physical health of women and girls. The effort will include an open call to grass-roots organizations “beyond the reach of major funders,” she said. “I hope to lift up groups with personal connections to the issues they work on.”
These last two efforts share similarities to initiatives by other major philanthropists eager to disperse some of their massive wealth.
Since 2021, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sanchez have issued five “Courage and Civility Awards” of $50 million to $100 million to leaders such as musician Dolly Parton, actor and activist Eva Longoria, and retired Navy Adm. William McRaven to disperse as they see fit.
A year ago, MacKenzie Scott held an open call to “community-led, community-focused” nonprofits, resulting in 361 organizations from the U.S. and Puerto Rico receiving grants this spring that totaled $640 million. Lever for Change, the group that partnered with Scott on her open call, will likewise work with French Gates.
In her op-ed, French Gates noted that roughly 2% of charitable giving in the U.S. is directed to groups supporting women and girls, with a fraction of that focused on women of color.
“When we allow this cause to go so chronically underfunded, we all pay the cost,” she wrote. “As shocking as it is to contemplate, my 1-year-old granddaughter may grow up with fewer rights than I had.”
One of the 16 U.S. grant recipients announced Tuesday is a nonprofit news organization called The 19th, which is reporting on issues important to women and LGBTQ+ people with a focus on underrepresented communities.
“This support will bolster our critical politics and policy coverage in a seismic election year, allow us to make strategic investments in our audiences and our future, and lay the foundation for our long-term sustainability in a turbulent time for our industry,” Emily Ramshaw, co-founder and CEO of The 19th, said in a blog post.
