Melinda French Gates Gives $250 Million to Make Women Healthy

Melinda French Gates (Jeff Spicer / Getty Images for The Clooney Foundation For Justice)

Key Points

• Melinda French Gates is donating $250 million to over 80 organizations globally to improve women’s mental and physical health.
• The funding is part of French Gates’ $1 billion commitment to advancing women’s rights and power, announced in May 2024.
• Over 65% of the awards went to community-based organizations, with 62% in the Americas and 43% in Africa.

Melinda French Gates is giving $250 million to more than 80 organizations across the world that aim to improve the mental and physical health of women.

To choose which groups to receive awards of between $1 million and $5 million, French Gates issued an “open call” for applications more than a year ago through Lever for Change, a nonprofit affiliate of the MacArthur Foundation.

On Wednesday, Pivotal—an organization Gates founded a decade ago in Seattle that relies on grant making, investing, advocacy, and partnerships to achieve its goals— announced the 80-plus organizations that will receive Action for Women’s Health awards out of more than 4,000 groups from 119 countries that applied. The funding is part of French Gates’ $1 billion commitment to advancing women’s rights and power globally, which was announced in May 2024.

“I want to see women everywhere making decisions, controlling resources, and shaping policies and perspectives—but women can’t do well unless they can be well,” French Gates said in a statement. “These 80+ organizations have proven that when it comes to improving women’s health, progress is possible and solutions exist.”

French Gates and Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates divorced in 2021, and she subsequently left the foundation they co-founded in May 2024 with $12.5 billion she has committed to women and families. Before the divorce, French Gates was already branching out on her own in support of women through Pivotal.

The open call approach Pivotal chose to take for Action for Women’s Health was a competitive process that “unearthed a vibrant pipeline of credible, community-rooted innovators—from as close as right here in Seattle, to others halfway around the globe in Australia,” Haven Ley, chief strategy officer at Pivotal Ventures, a Pivotal division, said in an emailed response to questions.

“To fully exercise power over their lives, women need to be mentally and physically healthy. And yet, women’s health is being neglected everywhere,” Ley said. “More than one billion women and girls suffer from malnutrition. Reproductive healthcare is being denied in the U.S. and other countries. And globally, a woman dies in childbirth every two minutes.”

Although “this is unacceptable,” Ley continued, “there is reason for hope.” The open call reflects the “ambition and optimism” required to meet the uncertainty of the moment.

The organizations selected for awards will be entered into Lever for Change’s Bold Solutions Network, which is a public-facing database of past awardees, finalists and other top-ranked nonprofits that have been vetted through this and other competitions. Lever for Change works with these groups to strengthen their organizational capacity and find additional donors.

The range of organizations that applied for the Action for Women’s Health awards, and the breadth of women’s health topics that they address, underscored the underfunding of women’s health, Cecilia Conrad, CEO of Lever for Change, said in an interview. The response also revealed that diseases such as cancer or heart disease, can be quite different for women than men, and “that it’s a space that is understudied,” she says.

A goal of the open call was to provide flexible funding to groups working in their own communities in culturally relevant ways. More than 65% of the awards went to community-based organizations based across the world. Of those receiving funding, 62% work in North America, South America, Central America, and/or the Caribbean, while another 43% are in Africa, 20% are in Asia, 6% are in Europe, and 2% are in Oceania.

Examples of awardees include Friendship Bench—a nonprofit that originated in Zimbabwe that trains community members to provide mental health support to women in their communities. Alternatives for Girls in Detroit helps high-risk homeless young women and their children avoid violence, pregnancy, and exploitation.

Another, SAS Brasil, “brings specialized care to patients through digital clinics and telehealth, providing cancer screening and women’s health services directly inside underserved communities in partnership with the public-health system,” Ley said. “This funding allows them to invest in technologies and infrastructure for women’s health in the Amazon and Northeast Brazil that will enable earlier screening that can be replicated nationally.”

Mujeres Aliadas in Mexico, another awardee, “blends professional and traditional midwifery into a community-based model that ensures care is accessible and culturally relevant,” Ley said. The award will allow them “to expand the reach of high-quality care to more indigenous and underserved communities in Michoacán.”

The awards are distributed through Pivotal’s donor-advised fund at National Philanthropic Trust.

Write to Abby Schultz at abby.schultz@barrons.com