- Bill Gates will close his foundation in 2045, about 20 years earlier than he'd planned.
- The accelerated giving of $200 billion might fill gaps left by drastically reduced foreign aid.
- The foundation is guided by principles like reducing deep poverty and fighting deadly diseases.
The Gates Foundation, which has spent $100 billion on humanitarian and educational causes around the world, will close its doors Dec. 31, 2045, according to its chairman, Bill Gates. That gives him 20 years to spend an additional $200 billion on humanitarian causes.
In a blog posted on the Gates Foundation website Thursday, Gates ponders a quote from Andrew Carnegie’s book, “The Gospel of Wealth.” He said it was key to his decision to accelerate giving his money away and closing the foundation.
Carnegie wrote that “the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.”
Gates wrote that whatever else people say of him, it will not be that he died rich. “There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people.”
Microsoft is celebrating its 50th anniversary and the foundation that sprang from its success turned 25 this year. Gates and his then wife, Melinda — they have since divorced — started the foundation in 2000 and originally planned for it to outlive them. Along the way, they also received a huge donation — from 2006 to 2024, the total was $43.3 billion — from billionaire Warren Buffett, which bolstered what they could accomplish. But Gates wrote that he’s changed the timeline after reflection.
He said the mission has been “rooted in the idea that where you are born should not determine your opportunities.” In the post, Gates lists some of the humanitarian projects the foundation has initiated or participated in, often with partners. Among them:
- Distributing vaccines and anti-retrovirals around the world with Gavi and Global Fund, which he credits with saving more than 80 million lives so far.
- Helping eradicate polio, along with Rotary International.
- Funding creation of a vaccine for rotavirus that has reduced by 75% the number of children who die because of diarrhea.
- In the U.S., among other education initiatives, the foundation has worked to improve high school graduation rates.
Over the years, the foundation has focused on health, gender equality, global development and education around the world, including in Africa, China, East Asia, Europe, India, the Middle East and North America.
Under the banner of global health, the organization has tackled research and development of treatments, taking aim at diarrheal disease, HIV, malaria, tropical diseases that don’t get a lot of attention, pneumonia, tuberculosis and vaccine development and surveillance.
It has focused some effort on maternal, newborn and child nutrition and health, empowering women to be leaders and thrive economically, as well as health innovations and family planning, among others.
The foundation has also contributed to efforts to help prevent, treat and cure Alzheimer’s and develop power that reduces emissions and other energy-related innovations, Gates said.
It has also worked on agricultural development and initiatives surrounding water, sanitation and hygiene.
“Every step of the way, we brought together other foundations, nonprofits, governments, multilateral agencies and the private sector to solve big problems,” he wrote, promising the effort would continue for the next two decades.
Melinda French Gates responds to announcement
Melinda French Gates left the foundation and started her own humanitarian efforts. In written responses to the Associated Press’s questions, she wrote of her hope for the foundation’s legacy.
“To me, the greatest measure of success would be if long after the foundation closed, someone, somewhere, was living a life that looked different because we existed. We talked a lot there about unlocking virtuous cycles. I like to think that right now, the foundation’s work is contributing to a child getting a vaccine or a woman opening her first bank account — and that decades from now, their families and communities are going to continue to look different, because of what that child and that woman unlocked for the people around them."
She said they didn’t always hit the mark exactly right when they tried to help because they didn’t always know what locals know. They had to learn, by engaging with locals.
“We funded community toilets in India that people — especially women —wouldn’t use because they were dangerous to go to at night. We funded vaccines in Vietnam that had to be kept cold, but came in packaging that didn’t fit into the small refrigerators most people had there. We funded a simple pump to help East African farmers irrigate their land, but women — who account for half of all smallholder farmers — wouldn’t buy it, because they didn’t want to be seen swaying their hips in the way the pump required," French Gates said.
Goals for next 20 years
The New York Times credits the foundation with “utterly reshaping the landscape of global public health, pouring more than $100 billion into causes starved for resources and helping save tens of millions of lives.”
Gates said that coming donations will be guided by three key goals:
- That “no mom, child or baby dies of a preventable cause.
- That “the next generation grows up in a world without deadly infectious diseases.”
- That “hundreds of millions of people break free from poverty, putting more countries on a path to prosperity.”
The announcement could be propitious, at least in the short term, as the U.S. and other countries are cutting aid and getting criticism from researchers who say the cost could be deadly for some. Per the Times, “A study in The Lancet recently calculated that cuts to American spending on PEPFAR, the program to deliver H.I.V. and AIDS relief abroad, could cost the lives of 500,000 children by 2030. The journal Nature suggested that an overall cessation of U.S. aid funding could result in roughly 25 million additional deaths over 15 years."
Gates in several interviews criticized decisions that led to reductions in aid that saves lives. Of Elon Musk, he told the Times and other media that the richest man in the world was involved in killing the world’s poorest children. He was referring to foreign humanitarian aid cuts by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
In his blog, Gates notes that the U.S., the United Kingdom, France and other countries are cutting their humanitarian budget by tens of billions of dollars, creating a “gulf in funding” that even a rich foundation like his cannot replace.
“The reality is we will not eradicate polio without funding from the United States,” per Gates.
He ends the post, “A lot can happen over the course of 20 years. I want to make sure the world moves forward during that time.”
What happens to the Gates Foundation in 2045?
It’s hard to predict what the foundation’s demise might mean to humanitarian projects. In the short term, they’ll get a big boost. But what happens when the funds are gone?
According to Business Insider, the Gates Foundation is the third-largest charitable foundation in the world.
Gates said his hope is that the increased pace of giving will also increase the rate of progress and lead to solutions, not just help for some of the persistent problems that plague people, particularly in poorer countries. That, combined with advancements in artificial intelligence, he said, could change the world.