In 2024, Melinda French Gates walked away from the foundation that carried her name, took $12.5 billion with her, and is now spending those billions on ...

Melinda French Gates resigned from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in May 2024, three years after her divorce, taking $12.5 billion with her to direct independently. Rather than spreading that money across a broad portfolio of causes, Melinda Gates decided to single at one and narrow the target to women and girls and specifically the parts of that problem that have historically gone chronically underfunded, according to a report by Startup Fortune. French Gates has consistently directed her money towards the underfunded areas such as menopause research, childcare infrastructure, domestic workers and representation of women in finance and media. Gates approach avoid popular causes which already attract a lot of funding making sure that each dollar makes maximum impact.Melinda Gates wants to tackle time povertyPhilanthropist Melinda French Gates frequently returns to on major statistic which is the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The ILO has estimated that women and girls collectively perform 12.5 billion hours of unpaid work every day which includes cooking, cleaning, childcare and care of elderly people. Before the pandemic, women were already taking care of roughly three-quarters of unpaid household labor, and that share has since increased rather than declined.She has a specific term for the consequence of that imbalance: time poverty, a concept she first raised publicly in the Gates Foundation's 2016 annual letter, well before it became a widely discussed topic. Her argument isn't framed primarily as a moral one, though it carries that dimension too — it's structural. Unpaid care work effectively subsidizes the global economy while simultaneously excluding hundreds of millions of people from paid work, education, and positions where real decisions get made. Without that "second shift" being addressed, building a career, finishing an education, or taking on real responsibility becomes far harder, which is why her funding has consistently gravitated toward childcare systems and paid family leave rather than more visible, easily celebrated causes.Where did Melinda Gates actually donated her moneyHer headline pledge was $1 billion in 2024, allocated as follows:* US organizations such as the National Women’s Law Center and Center for Reproductive Rights received $200 million.* Global leaders including Jacinda Ardern and Shabana Basij-Rasikh were each given $20 million to direct independently.* Open call funding invited applications worldwide for women’s health projects, with $250 million set aside.In June 2026, she added $215 million for reproductive and midlife health, including menopause research, followed by another $10 million at a benefit concert with Olivia Rodrigo.Why she targets underfunded causes over popular onesThe recurring pattern in French Gates's giving is a consistent preference for what's underfunded over what's popular — menopause research, domestic workers, childcare infrastructure, and women's political representation in finance and media. These aren't causes that generate easy applause at a gala, which is precisely why funding gaps exist around them in the first place, and precisely why money directed there tends to produce outsized impact relative to money aimed at more crowded, already well-funded causes.The second consistent element of her approach is funding at a scale large enough to change what recipients are able to attempt, rather than distributing smaller amounts thinly enough to keep many organizations modestly funded. A $20 million fund given to a single leader to deploy at their own discretion functions very differently than twenty separate $1 million grants carrying individual reporting requirements — one approach enables sustained activity, while the other creates the conditions for a genuinely ambitious attempt at change.The specific thesis behind French Gates donating moneyFrench Gates's giving is organized around a specific thesis: that women's economic power, health, and political representation are really the same underlying problem viewed from three different angles, and that progress on any one of them remains fragile without progress on the other two as well. Health without economic power leaves people dependent on others. Economic power without political representation means outside parties continue writing the rules. And representation without health or financial security simply isn't accessible to most of the population in the first place.That framework is why her funding spans all three areas simultaneously, channeled through Pivotal, the philanthropic organization she founded in 2015 — years before her divorce gave her independent control over her share of the Gates fortune. That timing matters: her current giving strategy isn't a reaction to a personal life event, but the execution of a decade-old conviction that only recently gained control of its own capital.Get the latest technology news and updates. Download the TOI App.