More than 80 nonprofit organisations focused on women’s healthcare around the world have been awarded grants totalling $250 million from Melinda French Gates, following a year-long global application process.

The funding forms part of the Action for Women’s Health challenge, a major philanthropic effort to back organisations that support women’s health at community level. French Gates said that most of the recipients had never previously received funding from her organisation, Pivotal, or from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which she co-founded with her former husband, Bill Gates. She stepped away from the foundation last year.

“It will be instructive for the world to see what it looks like when organizations like this aren’t so chronically underfunded,” French Gates said in written responses to The Associated Press, which receives funding from Pivotal for news coverage.

The grants, which range between $1 million and $5 million, were distributed through an open competition for nonprofit organisations across most countries. According to French Gates, the open call was designed to identify groups that might otherwise go unnoticed by major funders.

The Chicago-based nonprofit Lever for Change oversaw the application process, receiving more than 4,000 applications from 119 countries. Cecilia Conrad, CEO of Lever for Change, said the level of interest demonstrated the importance of global women’s health.

“This seems to be a topic that resonates,” Conrad said. “So I’m excited about helping to uplift and elevate the profile of these organisations with other funders.”

Her organisation works with both large and small donors, advising them on potential grantees based on the finalists from previous funding competitions. The Action for Women’s Health challenge is the second largest competition Lever for Change has managed, following MacKenzie Scott’s $640 million donation to U.S. community-based nonprofits in March 2024.

For some of the winners, the new funding represents a transformative opportunity. The global investment in women’s health is part of a wider $1 billion pledge by French Gates to advance women’s rights over two years. In addition to this initiative, she has distributed $20 million each to 12 individuals to donate to nonprofits of their choosing and committed another $150 million to promote gender equity in workplaces.

The $250 million distribution marks one of the largest-ever single investments in women’s health organisations operating on a global scale. For the groups receiving support, the funding offers both financial security and a platform to continue driving change in areas where progress has too often stalled.