Melinda French Gates has dedicated her life to giving away billions of dollars. She’s not just throwing money around, however. The ex-wife of Microsoft founder Bill Gates wants to make sure her billions help transform the world.
That mission is explained on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation website:
“We wake up every day determined to use our resources to create a world where everyone has the opportunity to lead a healthy and productive life. Most importantly, we believe this: All lives have equal value. That’s why we made the decision to donate our wealth from Microsoft to help others,” the website shared.
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Gates has also pushed for other billionaires to follow in her footsteps by helping to found the Giving Pledge. That’s something she explains in her new book “The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward.”
“So we set out to role model for society with The Giving Pledge – founded by Warren Buffett, my ex-husband Bill Gates and myself – to say, if you’re of this level of wealth, join us and commit to giving half away. None of the three of us would have thought that we would have over 240 families now that are part of The Giving Pledge, and we have not just first-generation givers, but now we have second and some third-generation givers,” she told NPR.
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Gates has generally avoided politics, but she has recently spoken out about cuts made by Elon Musk as part of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a semi-official government agency headed by the Tesla CEO.Â
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Melinda French Gates avoid politics (usually)
Melinda French Gates has generally been very careful about speaking out against any government. That’s because she believes that while philanthropists can take risks that governments can’t, the two sides must ultimately work together.Â
“I didn’t realize that it takes philanthropy in concert with civil society and government — massive government funding — to change things,” she told NPR.
That’s a lesson she learned when working on projects with massive scale, like getting vaccines distributed around the world.
“If you really want to affect children’s lives around the world and get vaccines out, that takes enormous government funding. Philanthropy cannot do it on its own. If you want to affect maternal health around the world, you really have to have philanthropy, again, taking on the experiments, trying things, figuring out what works, doing the research, but then it really takes government funding to scale those things up,” she added.
That’s a model that’s also spelled out on the foundation’s website.
“We typically hear about two sectors, the public and the private. The private sector — business — is good at developing products and services, while the public sector —government — is good at delivering solutions to all the people who need them. In many cases, the private and public sectors, acting either separately or together, meet people’s needs,” the Gates Foundation website shared. “But there are gaps, spaces where some people don’t get what they need to live healthy, productive lives.”
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Melinda French Gates speaks out on DOGE
Melinda French Gates, by the nature of her philanthropic work, generally does not make political statements. Even when she clearly calls out Musk and Trump, she chooses her words very carefully.
“The cuts of things like USAID are absolutely devastating for families all over the world. Let’s be honest: 16 million women will not have access to maternal health services because of these cuts,” she shared.
The philanthropist tries to be very careful in what she’s saying, but her blunt message is very clear.
“Everything that philanthropy does is…we take risks where a government can’t with taxpayer money and shouldn’t. But then, once we know something works, it’s really up to the government to scale it up. So to see that women won’t have health services or there’ll be 17 million more cases of malaria next year, it’s almost unimaginable to me,” she added.
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Basically, French Gates has thrown down a gauntlet and made it clear that many deaths will be on the administration’s hands, but she said it in as kind a way as possible.
Melinda French Gates no longer plays an active role in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
