MacKenzie Scott, Melinda Gates Give $40 Million To Gender Equality Groups

Philanthropists MacKenzie Scott and Melinda French Gates joined forces Thursday to give $40 million to four organizations that promote gender equality.

The recipients were part of the Equality Can't-Wait Challenge, which was announced last year by Scott and French Gates and also funded by billionaire Lynn Schusterman's family foundation. The projects winning $10 million each were selected from a pool of more than 500 applicants working in fields including technology, education, care-giving and indigenous communities. An additional $8 million was split between two finalists.

"The awardees are strong teams working on the front lines and from within communities to help women build power in their lives and careers," Scott said in a statement. French Gates said she hoped the funding would help "break the patterns of history and advance gender equality."

Scott is the world's third-richest woman, with a fortune of $64.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, while French Gates has a net worth of $3.2 billion.

Both women have renewed control over the directions of their fortunes after separating from their husbands in recent months and years. They've also made supporting gender equality a centerpiece of their charitable efforts.

Record Giving

The challenge, launched the year after Scott and Amazon.com Inc. co-founder Jeff Bezos divorced, was one of Scott's first major philanthropic efforts, only to be overshadowed a month later when she announced that she'd given away $1.7 billion to 116 nonprofits. Since then, Scott distributed more than $6.8 billion to hundreds of other organizations in what is likely an annual record for a living person. The beneficiaries include groups that focus on women's health and education.

Earlier this year, French Gates announced a divorce of her own, throwing into question the future of the largest private family foundation on the planet.

She and Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates initially insisted their split wouldn't affect the foundation, but since the May announcement there have been several major changes. Those include a plan to add more trustees and an agreement that French Gates might leave in two years if the ex-couple can't work together.

In a show of commitment, they promised an additional $15 billion to the foundation's endowment and launched a $2.1 billion gender equity-focused campaign. French Gates has also pledged to spend $1 billion to support gender equality through Pivotal Ventures, which hosted the joint challenge with Scott and Schusterman.

The $10 million recipients announced Thursday are Building Women's Equality through Strengthening the Care Infrastructure, Changing the Face of Tech, Girls Inc.'s Project Accelerate and The Future is Indigenous Womxn. The $8 million recipients are FreeFrom, which fights intimate-partner violence, and IGNITE, which trains women to enter political activism.

--With assistance from Sophie Alexander.

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