Dale said the fact that they have their own separate interests means their individual giving outside of the foundation could pick up.
That’s what happened following Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott’s divorce in 2019. As a couple, they weren’t big philanthropists, especially relative to their $137 billion net worth at the time. Shortly after their split, Scott received a quarter of the former couple’s Amazon.com Inc. stake, worth about $38 billion then. She signed the Giving Pledge and in 2020 went on a philanthropic tear, giving away almost $6 billion to hundreds of small organizations in a matter of months.
In other small coincidences, the Gates announcement of a split came in the form of a Twitter message, signed “Melinda Gates and Bill Gates,” a departure from the “Bill and Melinda” on pretty much everything else the couple signs. And like Scott, Melinda has prominently embraced her maiden name since they announced the split, going by Melinda French Gates.
The two women have worked together on shared causes, including the Equality Can’t Wait Challenge in 2020, a $30 million award to organizations that come up with ways to advance women’s power by 2030.
In 2015, Melinda started Pivotal Ventures, an investment and incubation company, “as a separate, independent organization” from the foundation to focus on solving issues impacting women and families. Bill also has his own side projects, like Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a fund that fights climate change by investing in green startups.
Dividing The Assets
How the Gates fortune is split could determine which causes get more attention. Their complicated holdings have already begun untangling, with more than $2 billion transferred to Melinda this week alone. The bulk of it is from about 14.1 million shares in Canadian National Railway Co.
For now, the foundation is projecting an image of calm.
Carla Sandine, spokesperson for PATH, a global health non-profit and major grantee of the Gates Foundation, said they’ve heard the same thing as everyone else: nothing is going to change.
“I think we have to trust that,” said Sandine. PATH, based in Seattle, has received more than $2.2 billion from the Gates Foundation.
The fact that the divorce of two people has caused so much anxiety and uncertainty in the nonprofit world highlights the problems with the modern philanthropy model, said Erica Foldy, associate professor of public and nonprofit management at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.
“What a few individuals decide to do has a massive impact on the health and well-being of millions or even billions of people,” Foldy said.
Sandine agrees that it’s frustrating that the world depends on the generosity of individuals to solve its problems.
“I think the fact that we would even talk about the future of global public health hinging on the relationship between individuals, I think it’s reflective of a larger problem,” Sandine said. “Public health around the world is not properly funded, so Bill and Melinda Gates have been filling massive gaps.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.