Melinda French Gates, MacKenzie Scott, and the New Era of Giving | Pivot

... Melinda French Gates. She announced her next chapter in philanthropy this week as she prepares to leave the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She plans to donate $1 billion globally over the next two years to help support women and families as well as reproductive rights in the US. A portion of the money will also be distributed in the form of, uh, $20 million grants to individuals like former New Zealand Prime Minister, uh, uh, Jacinda Ardern and Director Ava DuVernay, uh, to use at their discretion. I think Melinda was a, a, a funder of her recent film, for example, and, uh, there's a whole bunch of people, The 19th, she's given all this, these grants to really terrific groups and it's a r- it's a fascinating move between her and Mackenzie Scott. Uh, we have entered a very interesting era of philanthropy. Mackenzie Scott, as you know, a former, uh, was, used to be married to Jeff Bezos, donated $640 million over, to over 300 nonprofits a few months ago. She donated $2.2 billion last year. She is burning up the, getting rid of her money off her plate as if it's like lava. Um, y- this is really interesting, um, th- these two women, and then obviously, uh, um, Laurene Powell Jobs is making media investments, she has a, her own Emerson Collective that does both philanthropy and investments. Um, what do you, what do you, what do you think? What do you think about this?

I think it's wonderful. Um, I think... I'm a sexist, I think there are certain behaviors that are more prone to people born as women and born as men, and one of the things I notice about, uh, philanthropy from women is they're not as big on the ribbon-cutting and believing that they should have input and influence into education 'cause they give, you know, $50 million to the Newark School District, not recognizing they don't know a fucking thing about public school education. I find that generally speaking when women give money away, it's in return o-... They ask for less in return and they're more promiscuous. They're like, "I've got a shit ton of money, it makes no sense to hoard wealth and I'm gonna start pushing it out and I'm gonna ask for almost nothing in return." And I think Mackenzie Scott is an outstanding American. I mean, look at... I- I- I'm here for Bill Gates'... uh, I'm sorry. I'm here for Jeff Bezos' midlife crisis. I actually enjoy watching it, I can relate to it, but while he's building super yachts for $300 million, you know, Mackenzie Scott is sending, sending $15 million to the JED Foundation to work on teen suicide. And by the way, she doesn't demand anything, she doesn't want to show up, she doesn't want her name on anything, she just wants to get, start helping people. And this feels, this feels like that. And then in another, what I think is just absolutely wonderful here and I think I'm going on Morning Joe on tomorrow to tal-