Philanthropists MacKenzie Scott and Melinda French Gates joined forces to give $40 million to four organizations that
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.
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“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
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
The $10 million recipients announced Thursday are Building Women’s Equality through Strengthening the Care Infrastructure, Changing the Face of Tech, Girls’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.
