Melinda French Gates is not just one of the world's wealthiest women, she also leads with her philanthropic activities. The ex-wife of Microsoft founder and former CEO Bill Gates has been doing most of her philanthropic work through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a non-profit which she established with Gates.
Now, French Gates is on a mission to utilise her wealth more productively. Instead of giving away most of her $11.4 billion, which she received as a result of her high-profile divorce with Gates, to the Foundation, she'll be focusing on donating the money to other charitable foundations, reported The Wall Street Journal.
The decision was apparently made late last year, around the same time that French Gates penned her first solo letter for the Giving Pledge. The Pledge was founded by Warren Buffett, Gates and French Gates to encourage the ultra wealthy to give away at least half their wealth to philanthropic causes either during their lifetime or upon death.
The list currently counts 231 signatories from 28 countries, most of whom are billionaires like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and others. The possible contributions from the pledge are estimated to be worth well over $600 billion.
"Along the way, I cofounded the Giving Pledge in 2010 and committed to giving away the majority of my resources in my lifetime. Today, I'm reaffirming that commitment," French Gates wrote for the Giving Pledge. "In the last two decades, I've seen that, at its best, philanthropy plays a unique role in driving progress by taking investment risks that others can't or won't to explore new ways of solving old problems."
Apart from the Pledge and the Foundation, French Gates also founded Pivotal Ventures to invest in philanthropic causes. Through the investment firm, she was also able to work alongside Mackenzie Scott, who herself quickly emerged as one of the world's biggest givers of wealth just months after her divorce with Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos.
