The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), previously the William H. Gates Foundation, is an American private foundation founded by Bill and Melinda Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was launched in 2000 and is reported to be the largest private foundation in the world,^[4] holding $50.7 billion in assets.^[5] The primary goals of the foundation are, globally, to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty, and, in the U.S., to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology. The foundation is controlled by its three trustees: Bill and Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett. Other principal officers include Co-Chair William H. Gates, Sr. and Chief Executive Officer Susan Desmond-Hellmann.^[6]

It had an endowment of $50.7 billion as of December 31, 2017.^[3] The scale of the foundation and the way it seeks to apply business techniques to giving makes it one of the leaders in venture philanthropy,^[7] though the foundation itself notes that the philanthropic role has limitations.^[8] In 2007, its founders were ranked as the second most generous philanthropists in the US, and Warren Buffett the first.^[9] As of May 16, 2013, Bill Gates had donated $28 billion to the foundation.^[1][10] Since its founding, the foundation has endowed and supported a broad range of social, health, and education developments including the establishment of the Gates Cambridge Scholarships at Cambridge University.

In 1994, the foundation was formed as the William H. Gates Foundation.^[11] During the foundation's following years, funding grew to $2 billion.

On June 15, 2006, Gates announced his plans to transition out of a day-to-day role with Microsoft, effective July 31, 2008,^[12] to allow him to devote more time to working with the foundation.

In 2005, Bill and Melinda Gates, along with the musician Bono, were named by Time as Persons of the Year 2005 for their outstanding charitable work.^[13] In the case of Bill and Melinda Gates, the work referenced was that of this foundation.

In April 2010, Gates was invited to visit and speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he asked the students to take on the hard problems of the world in their futures. He also explained the nature and philosophy of his philanthropic endeavors.^[14][15]

In 2010, the foundation's founders started the Commission on Education of Health Professionals for the 21st Century, entitled "Transforming education to strengthen health systems in an interdependent world."^[16]

A 2011 survey of grantees found that many believed the foundation did not make its goals and strategies clear and sometimes did not understand those of the grantees; that the foundation's decision- and grantmaking procedures were too opaque; and that its communications could be more consistent and responsive.

The foundation's response was to improve the clarity of its explanations, make "orientation calls" to grantees upon awarding grants, tell grantees who their foundation contact is, give timely feedback when they receive a grantee report, and establish a way for grantees to provide anonymous or attributed feedback to the foundation.^[17] The foundation also launched a podcast series.^[18]

In 2013, Hillary Clinton launched a partnership between the foundation and the Clinton Foundation to gather and study data on the progress of women and girls around the world since the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference On Women in Beijing.^[19][20] This is called "No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project."^[19][20]

On June 25, 2006, Warren Buffett (then the world's richest person, estimated worth of $62 billion as of April 16, 2008) pledged to give the foundation approximately 10 million Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares spread over multiple years through annual contributions, with the first year's donation of 500,000 shares being worth approximately $1.5 billion.^[21] Buffett set conditions so that these contributions do not simply increase the foundation's endowment, but effectively work as a matching contribution, doubling the foundation's annual giving. Bloomberg News noted, "Buffett's gift came with three conditions for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Bill or Melinda Gates must be alive and active in its administration; it must continue to qualify as a charity; and each year it must give away an amount equal to the previous year's Berkshire gift, plus an additional amount equal to 5 percent of net assets. Buffett gave the foundation two years to abide by the third requirement."^[22][23][24] The Gates Foundation received 5% (500,000) of the shares in July 2006 and will receive 5% of the remaining earmarked shares in the July of each following year (475,000 in 2007, 451,250 in 2008).^[25][26] In July 2018, Buffet announced another donation of his company's Class B stock, this time worth $2 billion, to the Gates Foundation.^[27]

To maintain its status as a charitable foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation must donate funds equal to at least 5 percent of its assets each year.^[28] As of April 2014, the foundation is organized into four program areas under chief executive officer Susan Desmond-Hellmann, who "sets strategic priorities, monitors results, and facilitates relationships with key partners":^[29]

The foundation maintains an online database of grants on its website which includes for each grant the name of the grantee organization, the purpose of the grant and the amount.^[31] This database is publicly available.

In November 2014, the Gates Foundation announced that they were adopting an open access (OA) policy for publications and data, "to enable the unrestricted access and reuse of all peer-reviewed published research funded by the foundation, including any underlying data sets".^[32] This move has been widely applauded by those who are working in the area of capacity building and knowledge sharing. Its terms have been called the most stringent among similar OA policies.^[33] As of January 1, 2015 their Open Access policy is effective for all new agreements.^[34] In March 2017, it was confirmed that the open access policy, Gates Open Research^[35] would be based on the same initiative launched in 2016 by Wellcome Trust in their Wellcome Open Research policy^[36] launched in partnership with F1000 Research.^[37][38] The Gates Foundation supported Our World in Data, a widely used publication on global change and one of the world's largest open-access publications.^[39] Bill Gates called the publication his "favorite website".^[40]

The following table lists the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's committed funding as recorded in their International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) publications. The Gates Foundation announced in October 2013 that it would join the IATI.^[41] The IATI publications only include a subset of Gates Foundation grants (mainly excluding grants to developed countries), and contain few grants before 2009 (which are excluded from the table).^[42] The Gates Foundation states on the IATI Registry site that "reporting starts from 2009 and excludes grants related to our US programs and grants that if published could harm our employees, grantees, partners, or the beneficiaries of our work".^[43]

The following table lists the top receiving organizations to which the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed funding, between 2009 and 2015.

The table again only includes grants recorded in the Gates Foundation's IATI publications.^[42]

The foundation explains on its website that its trustees divided the organization into two entities: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust.

The foundation section, based in Seattle, US, "focuses on improving health and alleviating extreme poverty", and its trustees are Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett.

The trust section manages "the investment assets and transfer proceeds to the foundation as necessary to achieve the foundation's charitable goals"—it holds the assets of Bill and Melinda Gates, who are the sole trustees, and receives contributions from Buffett.^[3]

The foundation posts its audited financial statements and 990-PF forms on the "Financials" section of its website as they become available. At the end of 2012, the foundation registered a cash sum of $4,998,000, down from $10,810,000 at the end of 2011. Unrestricted net assets at the end of 2012 were worth $31,950,613,000, while total assets were worth $37,176,777,000.^[46]

As of 30 September 2018, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the trust owned the following investments:^[47]

Christopher Elias leads the foundation's efforts to combat extreme poverty through grants as president of the Global Development Program.^[48]

In March 2006, the foundation announced a $5 million grant for the International Justice Mission (IJM), a human rights organization based in Washington, D.C., US to work in the area of sex trafficking. The official announcement explained that the grant would allow the IJM to "create a replicable model for combating sex trafficking and slavery" that would involve the opening of an office in a region with high rates of sex trafficking, following research. The office was opened for three years for the following purposes: "conducting undercover investigations, training law enforcement, rescuing victims, ensuring appropriate aftercare, and seeking perpetrator accountability".^[49]

The IJM used the grant money to found "Project Lantern" and established an office in the Philippines city of Cebu.^[50][51] In 2010, the results of the project were published, in which the IJM stated that Project Lantern had led to "an increase in law enforcement activity in sex trafficking cases, an increase in commitment to resolving sex trafficking cases among law enforcement officers trained through the project, and an increase in services – like shelter, counseling and career training – provided to trafficking survivors". At the time that the results were released, the IJM was exploring opportunities to replicate the model in other regions.^[52]

In October 2000, William Gates established the Gates Cambridge Scholarships which allow students and scholars from the U.S. and around the world to study at Cambridge University, one of the top universities in the world. The Gates Cambridge Scholarship has often been compared to the Rhodes Scholarship, given its similarly international scope and substantial endowment. In 2000, the Gates Foundation endowed the scholarship trust with $210 million to help outstanding graduate students outside of the United Kingdom study at the University of Cambridge.^[53] The Gates Foundation has continued to contribute funds to expand the scholarship, making it one of the largest and best endowed scholarships in the world. The Gates Cambridge Scholarship accepts less than 0.3% of applicants and remains extremely competitive. Each year, approximately 100 new graduate students from around the world receive funding to study at Cambridge University.

The Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was launched in mid-2005 as a "Learning Initiative", and became a full-fledged program under the Global Development Division in early 2010.^[60] The foundation has since 2005 undertaken a wide range of efforts in the WASH sector involving research, experimentation, reflection, advocacy, and field implementation. In 2009, the foundation decided to refocus its WASH effort mainly on sustainable sanitation services for the poor, using non-piped sanitation services (i.e. without the use of sewers),^[60] and less on water supply. This was because the sanitation sector was generally receiving less attention from other donors and from governments, and because the foundation believed it had the potential to make a real difference through strategic investments.

In mid 2011, the foundation announced in its new "Water, Sanitation, Hygiene Strategy Overview" that its funding now focuses primarily on sanitation, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, because access to improved sanitation is lowest in those regions.^[61] Their grant-making focus has been since 2011 on sanitation science and technology ("transformative technologies"), delivery models at scale, urban sanitation markets, building demand for sanitation, measurement and evaluation as well as policy, advocacy and communications.^[60][61]

In mid 2011, the foundation stated that they had committed more than $265 million to the water, sanitation, and hygiene sector over the past five years, i.e. since about 2006.^[61] For the time period of about 2008 to mid 2015, all grants awarded to water, sanitation and hygiene projects totaled a value of around $650 million, according to the publicly available grant database.^[31]

Improved sanitation in the developing world is a global need, but a neglected priority, as shown by the data collected by the Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation (JMP) of UNICEF and WHO. This program is tasked to monitor progress towards the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) relating to drinking water and sanitation.^[62] About one billion people have no sanitation facility whatsoever and continue to defecate in gutters, behind bushes or in open water bodies, with no dignity or privacy. This is called open defecation and it poses significant health risks.^[63] India is the country with the highest number of people practicing open defecation: around 600 million people.^[64] The foundation has been funding many sanitation research and demonstration projects in India since about 2011.^[65]

In 2011, the foundation launched a program called "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge" with the aim to promote the development of innovations in toilet design to benefit the 2.5 billion people that do not have access to safe and effective sanitation.^[66][67] This program has generated significant interest of the mainstream media.^[68][69] It was complemented by a program called "Grand Challenges Explorations" (2011 to 2013 with some follow-up grants reaching until 2015) which involved grants of $100,000 each in the first round.^[67] Both funding schemes explicitly excluded project ideas that relied on centralized sewerage systems or are not compatible with development country contexts.^[70]

Since the launch of the "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge", more than a dozen research teams, mainly at universities in the U.S., Europe, India, China and South Africa, have received grants to develop innovative on-site and off-site waste treatment solutions for the urban poor.

The grants were in the order of $400,000 for their first phase, followed by typically $1 million – 3 million for their second phase; many of them investigated resource recovery or processing technologies for excreta or fecal sludge.^[71]

The "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge" is focused on "reinventing the flush toilet". The aim was to create a toilet that not only removes pathogens from human excreta, but also recovers resources such as energy, clean water, and nutrients (a concept also known as reuse of excreta). It should operate "off-the-grid" without connections to water, sewer, or electrical networks. Finally, it should costs less than 5 cents per user per day.^[70][72]

High-tech toilets for tackling the growing public health problem of human waste are gaining increasing attention, but this focus on a "technology fix" has also been criticized by many in the sector.^[68] However, low-tech solutions may be more practical in poor countries, and research is also funded by the foundation for such toilets.^[73][72]

The Reinvent the Toilet Challenge is a long-term research and development effort to develop a hygienic, stand-alone toilet.

This challenge is being complemented by another investment program to develop new technologies for improved pit latrine emptying (called by the foundation the "Omni-Ingestor"^[74]) and fecal sludge processing (called "Omni-Processor"). The aim of the "Omni Processor" is to convert excreta (for example fecal sludge) into beneficial products such as energy and soil nutrients with the potential to develop local business and revenue.^[75]

Some examples include:

Since 2011, the president of the Global Health Program is Trevor Mundel.^[91]

The foundation has donated billions of dollars to help sufferers of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, protecting millions of children from death at the hands of preventable diseases.^[94] However, a 2007 investigation by Los Angeles Times^[94] claimed there are three major unintended consequences with the foundation's allocation of aid. First, sub-Saharan Africa already suffered from a shortage of primary doctors before the arrival of the Gates Foundation, but "by pouring most contributions into the fight against such high-profile killers as AIDS, Gates grantees have increased the demand for specially trained, higher-paid clinicians, diverting staff from basic care" in sub-Saharan Africa. This "brain drain" adds to the existing doctor shortage and pulls away additional trained staff from children and those suffering from other common killers. Second, "the focus on a few diseases has shortchanged basic needs such as nutrition and transportation".^[94] Third, "Gates-funded vaccination programs have instructed caregivers to ignore – even discourage patients from discussing – ailments that the vaccinations cannot prevent".^[94]

In response, the Gates Foundation has said that African governments need to spend more of their budgets on public health than on wars, that the foundation has donated at least $70 million to help improve nutrition and agriculture in Africa, in addition to its disease-related initiatives and that it is studying ways to improve the delivery of health care in Africa.^[94]

Both insiders and external critics have suggested that there is too much deference to Bill Gates's personal views within the Gates Foundation, insufficient internal debate, and pervasive "group think."^[93][95] Critics also complain that Gates Foundation grants are often awarded based on social connections and ideological allegiances rather than based on formal external review processes or technical competence.^[95]

Critics have suggested that Gates' approach to Global Health and Agriculture favors the interests of large pharmaceutical and agribusiness companies (in which Gates invests) over the interests of the people of developing countries.^{[96][97][98][99]}

The Global Health Program's other significant grants include:

Under President Allan Golston, the United States Program has made grants such as the following:

Up to 2013, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided $71 million to Planned Parenthood and affiliated organizations. In 2014, Melinda Gates has stated that the foundation "has decided not to fund abortion", focusing instead on family planning and contraception in order to avoid conflation of abortion and family planning.^[121] In response to questions about this decision, Gates stated in a June 2014 blog post that "[she], like everyone else, struggle[s] with the issue" and that "the emotional and personal debate about abortion is threatening to get in the way of the lifesaving consensus regarding basic family planning".^[121] Since this time, their endeavors have shifted to a more global perspective, focusing on voluntary family planning and maternal and newborn health.^[122][123]

In 1997, the charity introduced a U.S.

Libraries initiative with a goal of "ensuring that if you can get to a public library, you can reach the internet".

Only 35% of the world's population has access to the Internet.^[124] The foundation has given grants, installed computers and software, and provided training and technical support in partnership with public libraries nationwide in an effort to increase access and knowledge.^[124] Helping provide access and training for these resources, this foundation helps move public libraries into the digital age.^[124]

Most recently, the foundation gave a $12.2 million grant to the Southeastern Library Network (SOLINET) to assist libraries in Louisiana and Mississippi on the Gulf Coast, many of which were damaged or destroyed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

A key aspect of the Gates Foundation's U.S. efforts involves an overhaul of the country's education policies at both the K-12 and college levels, including support for teacher evaluations and charter schools and opposition to seniority-based layoffs and other aspects of the education system that are typically backed by teachers' unions.^[125] It spent $373 million on education in 2009.^[125] It has also donated to the two largest national teachers' unions.^[125] The foundation was the biggest early backer of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.^[125] In October 2017 it was announced that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would spend more than $1.7 billion over five years to pay for new initiatives in public education.^[126]

One of the foundation's goals is to lower poverty by increasing the number of college graduates in the United States, and the organization has funded "Reimagining Aid Design and Delivery" grants to think tanks and advocacy organizations to produce white papers on ideas for changing the current system of federal financial aid for college students, with a goal of increasing graduation rates.^[127][128] One of the ways the foundation has sought to increase the number of college graduates is to get them through college faster, but that idea has received some pushback from organizations of universities and colleges.^[129]

As part of its education-related initiatives, the foundation has funded journalists, think tanks, lobbying organizations and governments.

Millions of dollars of grants to news organizations have funded reporting on education and higher education, including more than $1.4 million to the Education Writers Association to fund training for journalists who cover education.^[130] While some critics have feared the foundation for directing the conversation on education or pushing its point of view through news coverage, the foundation has said it lists all its grants publicly and does not enforce any rules for content among its grantees, who have editorial independence.^{[125][130][131]} Union activists in Chicago have accused Gates Foundation grantee Teach Plus, which was founded by new teachers and advocates against seniority-based layoffs, of "astroturfing".^[125]

The K-12 and higher education reform programs of the Gates Foundation have been criticized by some education professionals, parents, and researchers because they have driven the conversation on education reform to such an extent that they may marginalize researchers who do not support Gates' predetermined policy preferences.^[127] Several Gates-backed policies such as small schools, charter schools, and increasing class sizes have been expensive and disruptive, but some studies indicate they have not improved educational outcomes and may have caused harm.^[132][133]

Examples of some of the K-12 reforms advocated by the foundation include closing ineffective neighborhood schools in favor of privately run charter schools; extensively using standardized test scores to evaluate the progress of students, teachers, and schools; and merit pay for teachers based on student test scores. Critics also believe that the Gates Foundation exerts too much influence over public education policy without being accountable to voters or taxpayers. ^{[132][134][135]}

Some of the foundation's educational initiatives have included:

Critics say the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has overlooked the links between poverty and poor academic achievement, and has unfairly demonized teachers for poor achievement by underprivileged students.

They contend that the Gates Foundation should be embracing anti-poverty and living wage policies rather than pursuing untested and empirically unsupported education reforms.^[153]

Critics say that Gates-backed reforms such as increasing the use of technology in education may financially benefit Microsoft and the Gates family.^{[127][154][155][156][157]}

The foundation trust invests undistributed assets, with the exclusive goal of maximizing the return on investment. As a result, its investments include companies that have been criticized for worsening poverty in the same developing countries where the foundation is attempting to relieve poverty.^[77][158] These include companies that pollute heavily and pharmaceutical companies that do not sell into the developing world.^[159] In response to press criticism, the foundation announced in 2007 a review of its investments to assess social responsibility.^[160] It subsequently cancelled the review and stood by its policy of investing for maximum return, while using voting rights to influence company practices.^[161][162]

Critics have called on the Gates Foundation to divest from the GEO Group, the second largest private prison corporation in the United States. A large part of the prison's work involves incarcerating and detaining migrants that have been detained by the Obama administration and now the Trump administration.^{[163][164][165]} In spring 2014 the Gates Foundation acknowledged its $2.2 million investment in the prison corporation.^[166] It has more recently rebuffed critics' request that it sever investment ties with the prison corporation. It has refused to comment on whether it is continuing its investments.^[167][163]

In October 2006, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was split into two entities: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, which manages the endowment assets and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which "... conducts all operations and grantmaking work, and it is the entity from which all grants are made".^[168][169] Also announced was the decision to "... spend all of [the Trust's] resources within 20^[170] years after Bill's and Melinda's deaths".^{[169][172][173][174]} This would close the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust and effectively end the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In the same announcement it was reiterated that Warren Buffett "... has stipulated that the proceeds from the Berkshire Hathaway shares he still owns at death are to be used for philanthropic purposes within 10 years after his estate has been settled".^[169]

The plan to close the Foundation Trust is in contrast to most large charitable foundations that have no set closure date.

This is intended to lower administrative costs over the years of the Foundation Trust's life and ensure that the Foundation Trust not fall into a situation where the vast majority of its expenditures are on administrative costs, including salaries, with only token amounts contributed to charitable causes.^[172]