Melinda French Gates Discusses Warren Buffett and Tech ‘Nonphilanthropists’

Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A), has given annual donations to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for nearly two decades that total around $43 billion. So it came as a surprise when, earlier this year, Buffett declared that his philanthropic plans for the future would not include the foundation established by Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder Bill Gates and his former wife, Melinda French Gates. Upon Buffett’s death, gifts to the organization will cease, and his children will funnel his fortune into a charitable trust.

French Gates, however, wasn’t taken aback by the news. The philanthropist, who also collaborated with Buffett on the launch of the Giving Pledge campaign and worked with him during his 15 years as a Gates Foundation trustee, was aware of his plans before they were announced. “It’s been a decision that I think he’s been coming to over time,” French Gates told The New York Times in an interview published yesterday (July 28). “I think this has been a good evolution to his thinking on how he wants to do his giving,” she said.

French Gates, too, has cut ties with the Gates Foundation, which has given more than $77 billion in donations since its establishment. Armed with a net worth of $11 billion and $12.8 billion in funds from Gates, she stepped away from the organization earlier this year to pursue her own philanthropy with an emphasis on gender equality. Her first major charitable pledge will see $1 billion committed to dozens of organizations focused on women’s rights and female health solutions.

French Gates’ recent philanthropic activity and her June endorsement of President Joe Biden have drawn ire from the likes of Elon Musk, who described her as “the downfall of Western civilization” in a post on X. Musk has previously made similar comments about MacKenzie Scott, who, like French Gates, struck out on her own philanthropic path after separating from Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos. French Gates dismissed Musk’s criticisms as “kind of silly” and challenged his own charitable contributions, as well as those of Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, PayPal’s Peter Thiel and Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman, when asked whether the tech figures represent a generational shift in philanthropy compared to herself, Gates and Buffet. “They use their voice, and they use their megaphones, but I would not call those men philanthropists,” she told The New York Times.

In 2023 alone, Buffett doled out $893 million, while French Gates donated $249 million, and Gates dispersed $173 million. The trio were respectively the 4th, 9th and 16th most generous donors in the U.S. last year, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s top 50 donor list, which didn’t include Musk, Dorsey, Thiel or Ackman. “Go look at their record of actually giving money to society. It’s not big,” said French Gates. “Those are nonphilanthropists, in my opinion.”

Don’t rule out a collaboration between Melinda French Gates and MacKenzie Scott

French Gates’ recent donations, which include $240 million to a dozen prominent individuals who will distribute the funds across women’s health nonprofits, are reminiscent of Scott’s in regard to their emphasis on trust. French Gates described her donations as landing “in the middle” of trust-based gifts and the data-driven philanthropy favored by the Gates Foundation, noting that “there are many, many partners on the ground who do incredible work but often don’t get funded.”

The philanthropist, who has previously collaborated with Scott on charitable projects, isn’t ruling out future collaborations. Suggesting the two will not work together again would be “a false assumption,” said French Gates, who said “there may be more intersections in the future” and praised Scott’s philanthropic impact. “She certainly has had an effect on me in philanthropy, and I hope I’ve had an effect on her,” she said.

The two not only have overlapping styles in philanthropy but also parenting, said French Gates. Both aimed to keep their children grounded despite their vast wealth and helped each other out as they raised their kids in the same neighborhood of Medina, Wash. “I could see a bit how she was parenting, and I knew we had quite similar philosophies, actually,” said French Gates. “We were close-ish, not as close then, but I knew she was trying to raise her kids, literally just down the street from me, in essentially the same way.”