Thursday, January 2, 2025. Annette’s News Roundup.
Start 2025 off right. Live a good and generous life.
MacKenzie Scott and Melinda French Gates’s momentous year of giving By Alicia ADAMCZYK
Gift receipts. Happy 2025, readers!
I’m honored to kick off MPW Daily in the new year, and I wanted to start by circling back to, in my opinion, one of the most fascinating ongoing financial stories in America: how female billionaires like MacKenzie Scott and Melinda French Gates are reshaping philanthropy in the U.S.
It’s not unusual for the ultra-rich to be devoted philanthropists, and many American billionaires, including each woman’s famous ex-husband, have pledged to give away most of their wealth. But with French Gates and Scott wielding so much influence and giving away so much money in so short a time, their efforts are changing how others give as well.
MacKenzie Scott.
Scott’s donations are unusual for a number of reasons, but perhaps most significantly, they are unrestricted—organizations can use them how they see fit, which is atypical for wealthy donors who tend to attach plenty of strings. Scott’s funds aren’t tied up in a foundation or grant program; she is working with a team of consultants to give strategically to charities large and small, and leaving it up to the organizations she selects to spend the money wisely.
She focuses on organizations devoted to economic security and opportunity, child development, and healthcare access. She gave out more than $2 billion in 2024, bringing her giving total to more $19 billion over the past five years; according to Forbes, she is one of America’s top lifetime gifters, despite starting in earnest in 2019. Still, she is worth an estimated $31 billion thanks to the rising share price of the Amazon stock she received in the divorce from the company’s founder Jeff Bezos (had she held onto her entire stake, she’d be worth $87 billion today, according to Forbes—one of the 20 richest people in the world).
French Gates has a long philanthropic history—but 2024 marked a significant shift in her strategy. She resigned from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in May, leaving a 25-year-old charity she helped build into one of the largest in the world. She then put out an “open call” for nonprofits related to the betterment of women and girls to apply for grants from her Pivotal organization, pledging $1 billion over the next two years. Like Scott, she is leaving it to the individuals and organizations to make their own decisions on how to best use the funds. French Gates was spurred by the overturn of Roe v. Wade to double down on her efforts on promoting women’s health, getting political in the process.
By “using my own personal resources to put substantial investments behind women or minorities,” French Gates told NPR earlier this year, “I am pointing in a direction, I hope, for other philanthropists or even other governments.”
There are many questions to be answered about how this new charitable dynamic will work out. But it’s no surprise that Scott and French Gates, two of the most powerful women in the country, are at the helm of this shift, seemingly unbothered by criticism from the powerful men who disapprove of their charity. I look forward to seeing what they have in store this year. (Fortune, MVP by Emma Hinchcliffe)
A good and generous life, well lived.
Happy New Year, dear subscribers. I hope your year is off to a good start.
Alas, my mother-in-law Gilda Ellis, 96, died on the last day of the old year. She was a marvelous and remarkable woman.
The Roundup will not return until Tuesday, January 7th, 2025. I will be concerned until then with rituals and family activities honoring her.
Below are the paragraphs put together from her obituaries, one posted by the funeral home and one anticipated that will appear in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Gilda Mann Ellis
Haverford, PA and formerly Bala Cynwyd, PA
Gilda Mann Ellis, of Haverford and formerly Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, beloved wife of seventy years of the late ophthalmologist Dr. Richard A. Ellis and daughter of Ambassador Fredric R. Mann and Henrietta Weber Steinberg, passed away on December 31, 2024 at the age of ninety-six.
An acclaimed artist, she produced hundreds of abstract oil and acrylic paintings, silk-screen prints, sculpture and artistic photographs. Her work was featured in one-persons exhibits and included in group exhibitions in museums and galleries in the United States and Mexico and at the U.N. Women’s Conference in Nairobi Kenya, as well as in collections at Harvard University, the Museum of the Mexican American Cultural Institute in Mexico City, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D. C. and at her alma maters at the University of Richmond (formerly Westhampton College) Modlin Fine Arts Center and the Friends Select School. Her sculpture, Blue Vertical, is on display at the Mann Center for Performing Arts.
She also served as the national president of Artist Equity, which promoted the interests of professional artists. For twelve years she served as chair of the fine arts committee of the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority. The committee was responsible for passing upon the art proposed to meet the requirement that one percent of the construction cost of city buildings be designated for public art. She fondly remembered the many years she served as the judge of the Mummers String Band competition. Some of her scorecards are on display at the Mummers Museum.
A world traveler, she rode a donkey to visit the ruins in Petra, Yemen and studied the art of papermaking in China and Upper Mongolia. She prided herself on having traveled to every continent.