Less than 2% of philanthropic giving goes to women and girls. Can Melinda French Gates change that?

abcnews.go.com:

For years, less than 2% of philanthropic giving in the U.S. has gone to benefit women and girls, but that could change in part thanks to new resources that Melinda French Gates has pledged in recent weeks

Melinda French Gates ' has a long history of supporting the women’s movement, but it’s her new eye-popping funding commitments that could finally change women’s groups’ long-running lament that less than 2% of philanthropic giving in the United States directly benefits women and girls.

That 2% ceiling could be broken thanks to French Gates’ $1 billion commitment announced Tuesday and the momentum generated if others join her, said Jacqueline Ackerman, interim director of The Women’s Philanthropy Institute at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. The institute has researched giving to women and girls since 2019 and found that while the overall amount has increased over the years, it's never exceeded 2% of overall charitable dollars.

“One donor does have the potential to make a difference," Ackerman said. “But for that to be sustained long term, for that to change the numbers for more than just 1 or 2 years, you really do have to inspire others and be part of a movement.”

French Gates has been a philanthropist for decades, as a co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation twenty years ago and then, with the organization she founded in 2015, Pivotal Ventures. Ackerman said her philanthropy follows many trends of the way women give in that they are more likely to use all of their resources, including philanthropic giving, building a strong network, advocating for the causes they care about publicly, and, in French Gates’ case, for-profit investments.

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