Melinda French Gates has remodeled her comparatively younger Pivotal Philanthropies Basis into one in every of America’s largest personal foundations nearly in a single day, partly attributable to her cut up with ex-husband Invoice Gates.
As a part of the pair’s high-profile divorce introduced in 2021, Gates agreed to make a $7.88 billion donation—one of many largest ever—to French Gates’ personal basis, in keeping with a tax submitting, as beforehand reported by the New York Instances’ DealBook.
Gates’ donation skyrocketed Pivotal Philanthropies Basis’s property by greater than 1,000% to about $7.4 billion in 2024, in keeping with a tax submitting. That’s up from $604 million on the finish of 2023.
French Gates’ Pivotal Philanthropies now finds itself within the ranks of philanthropy energy gamers, simply over a 12 months after Gates and French Gates separated their philanthropic efforts in Could 2024. Amongst these energy gamers is Mackenzie Scott, who donated $7.2 billion to numerous organizations in 2025 alone. Scott has donated $26 billion since 2020, simply after her divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
The multibillion-dollar Gates donation to Pivotal is a part of a beforehand promised $12.5 billion that French Gates stated could be disbursed because of her “settlement with Invoice.” These funds have been totally paid out, and Gates’ donation makes up a part of the cash, a spokesperson for Pivotal Philanthropies confirmed to Fortune.
After resigning in Could 2024 as co-chair of the Invoice and Melinda Gates Basis, now the Gates Basis, French Gates stated the $12.5 billion could be used “on behalf of girls and households.” French Gates, who has a web price of $17.7 billion, in keeping with the Bloomberg Billionaires Index beforehand advised Fortune billionaires like herself “owe one thing again to society.“
It’s unclear the place the extra $4.6 billion was allotted. The funds might have been given to French Gates’ LLC, Pivotal, which doesn’t file a tax return, in keeping with DealBook.
Based in 2022, Pivotal Philanthropies Basis, which goals to “speed up the tempo of social progress for girls and younger individuals” operates inside a gaggle of organizations that additionally consists of Pivotal Initiatives Fund for coverage and advocacy work in addition to Pivotal Ventures, which focuses on direct investments and partnerships, in keeping with Pivotal’s web site. Whereas Pivotal Philanthropies is sure by strict 501(c)(3) guidelines governing minimal payouts, self-dealing restrictions, and detailed reporting necessities, as an LLC, Pivotal Ventures operations aren’t topic to strict reporting, giving it extra freedom, flexibility, and anonymity than a nonprofit.
One group that has already benefited from Pivotal Philanthropies’ earlier donations is Durham-based nonprofit Rewriting the Code, which helps younger girls working in or seeking to enter tech careers. The group, now in its tenth 12 months, in keeping with founder Sue Harnett, obtained $5 million from Pivotal Philanthropies in 2025.
Thanks partly to the funding from Pivotal, Harnett has grown her group from one worker in 2019 to 26 as of this 12 months. In 2026, the corporate is seeking to deal with serving to laptop science college students and ladies early of their tech profession get educated for a world the place AI is ubiquitous.
The funding from Pivotal has been instrumental to persevering with these packages, and importantly, holding them free for the ladies who want them, stated Harnett.
“It’s transformative,” Harnett advised Fortune. “It has allowed us to serve hundreds extra girls than we ever might. It’s allowed us to construct up a employees that has quite a lot of abilities that we actually want to have the ability to serve the ladies of our membership in addition to we presumably can.”
