NEW YORK (AP) In an effort to encourage donations on GivingTuesday, which has grown to be a significant annual fundraising day for nonprofits, Melinda French Gates is offering to match up to $1 million in pledges to two charitable groups.
Charitable groups have been requesting donations or other forms of support from their networks on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving for over ten years.
In an interview, French Gates expressed her excitement about GivingTuesday, saying, “It’s a great time to remind people that we’re better off when we give something back and we all have something to give back.” The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was one of the first organizations to promote GivingTuesday, which began as an initiative at the 92nd Street Y in New York and a hashtag before evolving into its own organization.
An estimated $3.1 billion was donated on GivingTuesday last year, although fewer people participated overall. According to Asha Curran, CEO of GivingTuesday, a nonprofit organization that made the calculation, matching like French Gates encourage people to donate.
According to her, we truly share a dedication to the notion that generosity is not limited to the extremely wealthy. that everyone must be generous in order to support a healthy society.
Even if fewer households are making contributions, donations may stay stable since those who do make larger contributions, according to Una Osili, associate dean at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
“There are many reasons to believe that giving will at least hold steady,” Osili stated, appealing to my optimist side. However, we have seen in recent years that many ordinary consumers are concerned about inflation in particular, despite the fact that it has reduced.
French Gates intends to match up to $500,000 in donations to the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers, which promotes individuals who care for others, and the Vote Mama Foundation, which assists moms seeking political office, through her firm Pivotal Ventures. The organizations have ten days to raise the money, and they will encourage donors to use Every.org, a nonprofit crowdfunding platform that will keep track of the matched gifts.
It was Melinda. Liuba Grechen Shirley, the founder and CEO of the Vote Mama Foundation, stated, “We were completely taken aback by this.”
From local school boards to the Senate, her group seeks to facilitate women’s access to political office. After she successfully petitioned the Federal Election Commission to utilize campaign cash to pay for daycare during her 2018 congressional race, she established the group. All federal candidates are now able to use campaign cash to cover childcare costs, and numerous states have enacted legislation along these lines.
Men utilize it. Women utilize it. According to Grechen Shirley, both Democrats and Republicans, as well as parents, use it. However, women use the majority of the monies, and women of color use the majority of those funds. Therefore, it has the power to change the political landscape.
French Gates has supported paid family leave, assistance for caregivers, and lowering the cost of child care through her donations and activism. Although she supported Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential election, she stated that she will not let Harris’ loss deter her from carrying out her mission.
According to French Gates, the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers was among the first groups to raise awareness of the work involved in providing care. French Gates had a long and treasured friendship with former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, who died last year, according to Paurvi Bhatt, the institute’s director.
In reference to the matching gift, Bhatt stated that it is founded on a long-standing, hand-in-glove friendship.
The most recent pledge French Gates has made since leaving the Gates Foundation in May is this public match on Giving Tuesday. (In 2021, French Gates and her ex-husband, Bill Gates, who is a billionaire and a co-founder of Microsoft, announced their divorce.) Over a two-year period, she committed $1 billion to help women and families. This included $250 million to fund global efforts to improve women’s health, and before the end of 2026, she gave $20 million to each of 12 leaders to donate to nonprofits of their choosing.
French Gates stated, “I wanted people to know I’m not going away, which is why I’ve come out so strongly saying, This is what I am doing next.” My principles remain unchanged. And this revolves around the question of how to create a society that is more egalitarian. The United States has a lot of work ahead of it.
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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to the Associated Press for news coverage in Africa, while Pivotal Ventures provides funding for journalistic coverage of women in statehouses and the workforce.
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