Only 2% of charitable giving goes to women. Can Melinda French Gates change that?

For most of her adult life, Melinda French Gates has helped control vast amounts of money — and wielded the resulting power. But even by billionaire philanthropist standards, she’s having a breakout year.

In May, three years after her divorce from Bill Gates, French Gates resigned from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — taking $12.5 billion with her. Her departure, after a quarter century spent helping to build the foundation into the country’s largest charity, sent shock waves through the world of big philanthropy.

But now that French Gates gets to make all of her own decisions, she’s building up an even bigger profile in philanthropy — as well as government policy and U.S. politics. She’s spending $1 billion of her money, and leveraging her ever-growing celebrity, to call more attention to a cause she has long championed: The systemic problems facing women and girls, and the persistent lack of funding to fix them.

“This is a hole that has existed for a long time. And by putting my resources there, and my voice … I think I can shine a light,” French Gates told NPR in an interview this week.

On Wednesday, French Gates is officially launching an “open call” for nonprofits to apply for grants from her Pivotal organization. The main requirement is that those applying for her funds should be addressing issues relating to women’s mental and physical health.

The aim, Pivotal and its partners say, is to identify nonprofits working around the country and the world — especially those who wouldn’t normally cross French Gates’ path or be invited to apply for her money.

“We hope to find organizations all over the world that are have been working on women's health issues — probably below the radar, quietly — and call attention to the work they're doing, so that [other] people can imitate it and support it,” says Cecilia Conrad, CEO of Lever for Change, the nonprofit that is running the “open call” process for French Gates and Pivotal.

Encouraging others to join her or imitate her has become a crucial part of French Gates’ strategy. And she acknowledges that governments will ultimately have to do far more than charitable billionaires to fundamentally fix systemic societal problems.

By going solo, and “using my own personal resources to put substantial investments behind women or minorities,” French Gates says, “I am pointing in a direction, I hope, for other philanthropists or even other governments.”

A spotlight for women and girls

French Gates has long been focused on a particularly brutal problem: The disparities facing women and girls, who make up half of the population — and yet receive less than 2% of all charitable giving in the United States.

Now French Gates is donating $1 billion over the next two years towards issues affecting this half of the population. She has already committed $440 million to some U.S. nonprofits and to several individuals, who she has asked to make their own grant-making decisions with her money.

Her latest initiative will allocate another $250 million, through grants of $1 million to $5 million each, to nonprofits who apply for her women’s health funds.

And her increased activity goes beyond writing charitable checks: French Gates is also advocating for access to abortion and other reproductive health care. She’s endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris and has donated to her presidential campaign.

Philanthropy experts say that her growing celebrity is already making a difference for French Gates' chosen cause.

“She's going to increase the spotlight on the issues and the needs that women and girls are facing in the U.S. and globally,” says Elizabeth Dale, a researcher and the Frey Chair for Family Philanthropy at the Johnson Center for Philanthropy.

A celebrity in her own right

French Gates has long been prominent in business and policy circles, thanks to her decades at the Gates Foundation and to her longstanding advocacy for women. The charity that she cofounded with her former husband is now a heavyweight in the worlds of global health and philanthropy: It gave away almost $8 billion last year alone.

Yet it was her divorce, followed by her decision to walk away from the country’s largest foundation, that turned French Gates into a mainstream celebrity. It’s a role that she’s embraced: In recent months, French Gates has made the rounds of Vanity Fair, the New York Times and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She has her own YouTube series, for which she’s interviewed Michelle Obama and Oprah.

And she’s enlisted other bold-faced names — including Olympic athlete Allyson Felix and Hollywood director Ava DuVernay — in her philanthropy, funneling several of them $20 million each to give towards organizations focused on helping women.

“I see so little investment around the globe in women's health,” French Gates says. “We all need to step up and look at these issues.”

How Roe v. Wade shaped her political involvement — and women's health

French Gates' focus on women’s health has also led her to wade into the fraught presidential election, after years of staying quiet on partisan topics. She’s faced some criticism both for her previous silence on abortion, and for her presidential endorsements this year. But French Gates tells NPR she was motivated to get involved in this year’s election because of the Supreme Court’s decision to repeal Roe v. Wade.

The resulting abortion bans and other state restrictions have worsened conditions for women’s reproductive and other health care across the country, as French Gates argues.

“Anytime, anywhere in the world, that you roll back a law related to women's health, it will have detrimental effects,” she says. “And we're already seeing that in our own country.”

Yet despite her endorsement of Harris, French Gates says that she hopes Republicans apply for her philanthropic funding and the new grants that she will be making through her open call.

And she adds that she could "very likely" vote for a Republican candidate in a future election.

“I am an independent voter," French Gates says. "And what I believe in for our country is bipartisan legislation, and bipartisan funding.”

Editors Note: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is among NPR's financial supporters.