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By THALIA BEATY, The Associated Press Melinda French Gates will grant $250 million to support women’s health around the world through an open call for nonprofits to apply for funding. The pledge announced Wednesday signals a new chapter in her individual philanthropic giving since departing from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation earlier this year. It is part of a two-year, $1 billion commitment that French Gates made in May to support women and families around the world.
Haven Ley, chief strategy officer at French Gates’ organization Pivotal Ventures, said the grant competition was a “curtain raiser” to a likely new focus on funding women’s health globally. Previously, Pivotal had primarily funded organizations working to advance women’s power in the U.S.
“By focusing on women’s health, she’s expanded her definition of women’s power to include a precondition that women must have their health to be powerful,” Ley said, speaking of French Gates, who also has 20 years of experience funding global health through the Gates Foundation. Lever for Change, a nonprofit affiliate of the John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation , is running the grant competition, called Action for Women’s Health. It has previously worked with both French Gates and billionaire author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott to award $40 million in 2019 to support nonprofits building women’s power in the U.S.
Scott also gave away $640 million to community-based nonprofits in March through a similar open call. This new open call will give at least 100 nonprofit organizations around the world between $1 million and $5 million in unrestricted funding. It will prioritize giving to organizations for whom that amount will make a big difference, though there is no restriction on the size of the organizations who are eligible to apply.
The deadline for nonprofits to register for the open call is Dec. 3 and the application deadline, review process and final decision will stretch to the end of 2025. The lengthy process includes a peer review by other applicants and an outside review by a panel of experts.
“Most of philanthropy remains invitation-only decision making behind closed doors,” said Cecilia Conrad, CEO of Lever for Change. “And what we have developed is a way to do an open call, a way to broaden access to philanthropic opportunities, that is also a process that is humane and equitable.” She said their initial model focused on scaling a solution, with a minimum commitment from donors of $10 million over five years, but now, they are also supporting donors who are interested in scaling a field.
Pivotal also is purposely considering a broad range of interventions related to women’s health, which could include mental health and menopause, Ley said. They hope that learning where opportunities and gaps in funding and resources are may help Pivotal design its new strategy, she said. The Associated Press receives financial support for news coverage in Africa from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and for news coverage of women in the workforce and in statehouses from Pivotal Ventures.
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