MacKenzie Scott, Melinda French Gates donate $40 million to fund gender equality projects

The amount will be split between four projects, each of which will receive $10 million.

An initiative from philanthropists Melinda French Gates, MacKenzie Scott and the family foundation of billionaire Lynn Schusterman awarded $40 million on Thursday to four promoting gender equality projects in tech, higher education, caregiving and minority communities. The projects are the winners of The Equality Can’t Wait Challenge, a funding competition launched in June 2020 with the goal of expanding women’s power and influence in the United States. According to an announcement released on Thursday by Lever for Change, an affiliate of the MacArthur Foundation that managed the challenge, the awardees, selected from a pool of more than 500 proposals submitted from across the country, will receive $10 million each. Equality Can’t Wait will fund: Building Women’s Equality through Strengthening the Care Infrastructure, a project by a coalition of organisations working on the societal perceptions of caregiving; Changing the Face of Tech, an initiative to offer women more opportunities in the tech sector; Girls Inc.’s Project Accelerate, which aims to help young women through college and career entry; and The Future is Indigenous Womxn, an initiative to support businesses owned by Native American women.