‘Spouse support is not necessary’: how billionaire women shape philanthropy

“Spousal support is not required.” Five words Divorce of Melinda Gates In the week before the lawsuit, a billion-dollar woman with her name and Bill Gates ’$ 130 billion claim to Microsoft’s wealth were prominent.

It could also serve as a motto for a growing group of women who are transforming the philanthropy of independent women.

Details of Gates’ separation agreement are private, even with the divorce petition and Bill’s company within a few days transferred stock Melinda is worth more than $ 2 billion.

As long as the pair continues to run Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation together, she manages less than half of Bill’s wealth, increasing her chances of transferring more wealth, making Melinda a greater philanthropic force within her.

There is no single template for the new class of female megadores, and they are the largest of them. There are some who have had titles for divorces (especially By MacKenzie Scott $ 38 billion settlement with Jeff Bezos) and others were widows, Laurene Powell Jobs, Julia Koch and Sheryl Sandberg.

Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg’s wife, is among those who have shared the same bill with her spouses until the first high-octane performance. More and more of their wealth comes from their entrepreneurship than from their husbands or ancestors.

Together, women’s philanthropy is moving away from pearl-clad societies and gala dinners that herald demographic and strategic changes in efforts to respond to charities.

The increase in women’s donations partly reflects the increase in their wealth. Women control a third of the world’s assets, through the hands of the BCG calculations, and they are piling up more with fast speed. But according to those working in the field, the most well-known well-being encourages others to follow their example.

Scott blew up the list of hair donors last year for $ 5.7 billion, the second of her ex-husband’s only. The amounts involved were more staggering than how she spent them, says Andrea Pactor, a former head of the Indiana University Women’s Philanthropy Institute.

“[It] it was so public that I think it’s a key point for women, and we hope it will change the way men think the way they do, ”she says.

In less than four months, Scott’s team scanned data from 6,500 organizations, interviewing hundreds of them before choosing 384 recipients working from food banks to education.

“Are McKenzie Scott’s strategies being replicated through philanthropy, forcing organizations that provide numerous project grants to step back and ask ‘how are we doing’?” says Jacob Harold, Candide’s executive vice president, who studies the Foundation and nonprofits.

What stands out, he says, was that his approach was “based on trust,” which involved less intrusive diligence required by many foundations, and these were unsolicited and unrestricted grants to relatively low-profile charities, not elite organizations.

Pactor says Scott and Gates ’focus has a“ consequence ”on other women. But it would be wrong to draw too much parallelism between them, warned Phil Buchanan, president of the Philanthropy Effective Philanthropy Center. Gates has been co-chair of the Gates Foundation for two decades and is new to the list of major donors to Scott (like Bezos).

However, as these lists of women are more diverse, Buchanan says she is hopeful that we will see “those who know top-down businesses, who sometimes have problems with large donors”.

According to research conducted by the Pactor Institute, men and women have different philanthropic styles and have different motivations for giving.

Dana Brakman Reiser, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, says that generational factors may play a greater role than gender, however. Gates is only 56 years old, a year younger than Jobs. Scott and Sandberg are 51, and Chan is just 36.

“It seems like philanthropy is going from being something you do in retirement to something you do when you’re building your empire, while your family is growing,” he noted.

They are younger donors more interested when investing with the impact of philanthropy, and is likely to use funds advised by limited liability companies and lenders that are more flexible and private than foundations.

According to Brakman Reiser, younger donors like Jobs and Chan, who were pioneers in the use of the LLC, are announcing “calculations with philanthropic tools”.

When the University of California, Los Angeles began its women’s philanthropy program 25 years ago, it was assumed that female donors would play a supporting role.

“They felt like,‘ I’m making donations: it’s my check, because my husband’s name isn’t even there [yet] thank you note. . . it comes back again, ”recalls Melissa Effron Hay, who directs the program.

But since then the campus has seen it significant change Giving women their own, and not being “transactional” in their quality of donations, Effron Hayek says, “Women give for different reasons. It is not necessary to put their name on the building. . . They want to make a commitment and feel the impact of giving. “

Kathleen Loehr, a charity who advises on attracting female donors, emphasizes Scott’s desire for influence, her rigorous research, and her attention to values ​​as women give differently.

Many women donors say the word “philanthropist” is highly paternalistic and inconsistent with their willingness to cooperate with supportive groups. They also provide reasons that many men forget, such as dealing with income inequalities and moving forward with other women and girls.

In this, Gates is also a role model. Anything that a spouse does not support is already inspired by female donor friends, as Effron Hayek says, “Melinda Gates is our animal spirit.”