Hundreds of billionaires pledged to give away $600 billion to charity—but the Bill Gates and Warren Buffett era of philanthropy may be over

Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett (Credit: The India Today Group / Getty Images)

• The era of billionaire baby boomer men leading philanthropy is over. Wealthy women are taking the reins, as the likes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett close an epoch of giving. Thanks to newly proposed tax policies and trust-based “stealth giving,” female mega-donors like MacKenzie Scott are the future of philanthropy. 

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett ushered in a new Gilded Era of philanthropic giving, likened in influence to the Rockefellers and Carnegies. But charity work is about to look a whole lot different as higher taxes are threatened on liberal institutions, and new methods of giving are popularized by women mega-donors.