Gates Foundation

Gates Foundation, private philanthropic foundation established in 2000 by Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates and his wife, businesswoman Melinda Gates. It focuses its grant-making and advocacy efforts on eliminating global inequities and increasing opportunities for those in need through programs that address, for example, global agricultural and economic development, medical research and public health initiatives in developing countries, and the improvement of education and access to information in the United States. The charity has set its lifespan to end 50 years after the deaths of its founders. Based in Seattle, the foundation also has offices in Washington, D.C.; New Delhi; Beijing; London; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Abuja, Nigeria; and Johannesburg.

In 1994, Bill and Melinda Gates established the William H. Gates Foundation, which focused its charitable giving on advancing global health and the community of the Pacific Northwest. Gates’s father, William, managed the activities of that entity. Three years later, the Gates Library Foundation was created; its aim was to improve Internet access to public libraries for low-income families in North America. It was later renamed the Gates Learning Foundation to reflect its expansion into broader education efforts.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was established in 2000 through the merger of the two Gates foundations. Its original priorities were global health, education, libraries, and the Pacific Northwest. In 2006 the foundation reorganized to comprise Global Development, Global Health, and United States divisions (a Global Policy & Development division was added in 2012). Also in 2006, the investor and philanthropist Warren Buffett made a lifetime pledge to the foundation of Berkshire Hathaway stock valued at $31 billion. At that time the foundation changed its structure, creating a trust (the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust) to manage and invest the endowment assets. In July 2008, Bill Gates stepped down from his position at Microsoft to devote his efforts full-time to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Global Development division strives to eliminate extreme poverty and hunger. Through strategic partnerships and grant-making activities in its agricultural development initiative, the program helps increase opportunities for farmers in developing countries and supports research on the production of rice and flour enriched with micronutrients. The program also seeks to increase financial services to the poor by funding projects that examine the effectiveness of loans, insurance, financial planning, and financial education in impoverished countries. In addition, Global Development is committed to global libraries, supporting public libraries and organizations that work to increase access to information technology. Finally, the program’s Global Special Initiatives awards grants to organizations that research issues of concern to the developing world, including water, sanitation, and hygiene.

The United States division is dedicated to reducing inequities and increasing opportunities for the country’s low-income, minority, and vulnerable populations. The United States program houses the foundation’s education initiative, which focuses on keeping young students from dropping out of school and better preparing high school graduates for college. The program also oversaw the public libraries initiative, which provided access to computers and the Internet at some 99 percent of U.S. public libraries; the Gates Foundation invested $240 million in the initiative, which completed its goals in 2003. Another initiative of the U.S. program addresses the issues of inequity and opportunity for families and children living in Washington. It supports projects that work with at-risk youth and that help to reduce homelessness among families in the region. The United States program also seeks to identify needs that fall outside the program’s established purview, thus shaping potential new directions for the program, and advocates for the foundation’s domestic efforts.

Both the Global Development and the Global Health divisions work to address high mortality and morbidity rates from preventable diseases in developing countries. The former is concerned with, among other topics. agricultural development, sanitation and hygiene, nutrition, polio, vaccine delivery, emergency response, and maternal, newborn, and child health. The latter program focuses on enteric and diarrheal diseases, HIV/AIDS, malaria, neglected tropical diseases, pneumonia, and tuberculosis. The foundation funds projects to increase access to existing vaccines and treatments for common diseases and supports research into new, affordable, and practical health solutions. The diseases it focuses on cause widespread illness and death in developing countries, represent the greatest inequities in health between developed and developing countries, and receive inadequate attention and funding.

The Global Health division also supports projects that advance health research and technologies in the developing world. It supports the development of affordable and accurate medical tools and invests in vaccines to prevent infectious diseases. The division’s Grand Challenges initiative funds potential scientific breakthroughs in the prevention, treatment, and cure of diseases in the developing world.

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In addition to the disease-specific and special initiatives, the foundation has a Global Policy & Advocacy division. It builds strategic relationships with governments and with public and private sectors, promotes public policies that advance the work of the foundation, and raises public awareness of the issues the Gates Foundation deals with. It also handles the foundation’s global health advocacy efforts, notably tobacco control, and global health interventions at the local and regional community levels.