NEW YORK — Already one of the leading philanthropic advocates for gender equality in the United States, Melinda French Gates is now ready to spend another $12.5 billion on tough problems like closing the gender pay gap and widening the women’s political participation, its beneficiaries hope.
The additional funds come after French Gates announced on Monday that she would step down as co-chair of the Gates Foundation, which she founded more than twenty years ago with her ex-husband Bill Gates. Gates will provide the $12.5 billion as part of an agreement struck when they divorced in 2021.
Organizations like Paid Leave For All, founded in 2019 to coordinate advocacy around passing federal paid leave legislation, said French Gates’ steady support over the years and her advocacy to bring attention to the issue has been a counterbalance other funders who have been slow to back tough fights like theirs.
“If you’re only willing to invest in something you think is going to win in the short term, you’re not going to make much of an impact,” says Dawn Huckelbridge, founder and director of Paid Leave For All.
While no one knows exactly what French Gates’ future plans are, Huckelbridge’s organization and other grantees expect her to use the money as part of its targeted advocacy and philanthropic support to increase women’s power and influence.
“This amount of money moving into a space, even with just a standard 5% drawdown, is going to be so significant,” said Teresa Younger, president and CEO of the Ms. Foundation for Women, which supports the women’s movement and the movement for gender equality in the U.S. The Ms. research. Foundation has documented the disproportionately small amount of philanthropic dollars that support nonprofits led by women of color or that primarily support Black women and girls.
In her post on Monday announcing her resignation, French Gates said she planned to spend the money on her work on behalf of women and families, adding: “I will share more about how that will play out in the near future.” future will look like.”
French Gates works through her organization, Pivotal Ventures, a limited liability company that also manages investments in profitable ventures. As a result, there is little public information about its grantmaking or the assets it manages. A spokesperson for Pivotal Ventures on Monday pointed to French Gates’ statement when asked for comment on her future philanthropic plans.
The bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which will change its name to Gates Foundation, is one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the world. As of December 2023, the endowment stood at $75.2 billion, thanks to donations from Gates and billionaire investor Warren Buffett. Although it focuses on many issues, global health remains its largest area of work, and most of its funding is intended to address problems internationally rather than in the US.
Pivotal Ventures has focused on a number of ways to increase women’s economic and political participation and power, such as closing the wage gap, offsetting care work often done by women, and encouraging women to run for office for a political position.
The Associated Press will receive financial support for reporting in Africa through the bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and for reporting on women in the workforce and state governments from Pivotal Ventures.
Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, began working with French Gates at least as early as 2018, she said.
“I have to say that they were one of the most attentive funders, if I may say so, in that they provided funding for general support and only asked if we could make ourselves available to provide guidance and advice at an early stage ,” Walsh said. She also credited French Gates with an ability to give and focus on gender equality that no other funder or foundation offers.
Walsh declined to say how much Pivotal Ventures has awarded to her organization, but said the funding supports their research in multiple areas, including the intersection of race and gender in politics and ways female political donors can use their influence and voice to greater effect . Her center can also fund the research of faculty and graduate students at other institutions, which helps signal to those schools that their research is valued, she said.
“I remember thinking that after working in this sector for over forty years, this was something that in many ways I never thought would happen, that there would be someone who would prioritize gender and gender equality , who had the ability to make investments that could be transformational,” said Walsh.
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