Bill Gates is pouring another $20bn into the charitable foundation he and his ex-wife Melinda French Gates run, pledging a 50 per cent increase in its annual distributions as he warns of “huge global setbacks” to the fights against preventable disease, inequality and poverty.
The new funding will swell the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s endowment by 40 per cent and allow the world’s largest private philanthropic organisation to raise its annual spending from under $6bn before the coronavirus pandemic to $9bn by 2026.
In January it had signalled that it would maintain its grantmaking at around the $6.7bn level it hit last year after it stepped up spending to respond to the immediate effects of Covid-19.
The extra resources were needed because the pandemic had set back progress in almost all of the areas in which the foundation worked, the Microsoft co-founder said in a blog post on Wednesday, while Russia’s war in Ukraine threatened to increase malnutrition and destabilise poor countries.
But the world’s fourth-richest man coupled the announcement with a warning that the world economy was entering a low-growth cycle that would constrain governments’ ability to tackle such challenges.
He urged “others in positions of great wealth and privilege” to “step up” to fill the gap, even as he warned that polarisation in the US was compounding the problem, “forcing us to look backwards and fight again for basic human rights, social justice and democratic norms”.
The new funding represents Gates’ largest donation from his estimated $122bn fortune since the foundation launched in 2000 with a $20bn transfer of Microsoft stock. He has previously pledged to give the bulk of his wealth to the foundation before he dies.
Since its creation, the foundation has spent $79.2bn, which Gates noted had been funded in large part by $35.7bn of gifts from Warren Buffett, the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway.
The new spending plans were agreed by a new board assembled during a tumultuous period for the foundation. Its co-chairs announced their plan to divorce in May 2021 and Buffett resigned as its only other trustee the following month.
Mark Suzman, the foundation’s chief executive, said in an interview that it hoped to “galvanise” governments into prioritising work on challenges from eradicating polio to improving educational outcomes. “While there has been support from governments, it’s not at the scale that’s needed,” he added.
“I think some of it, bluntly, is short-sighted,” Suzman said, pointing to a shortfall of spending on preparing for future pandemics. The foundation would spend the new funds on areas in which it already focused, he added, such as global health, food security, education, financial inclusion, sanitation and gender equality.
In a joint press release, French Gates said the higher spending would support the foundation’s partners in promoting “a fair and inclusive recovery and a healthier, more equal future”.
“Philanthropy has a unique role to play in helping people around the world recover from the pandemic and rebuild the underlying systems that left so many so vulnerable to begin with.”
Tom Tierney, one of the foundation’s new board members, described Gates’ new funding as “a call to action for the world’s wealthiest to do more, now”.
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