Update on the Gates Foundation

Founded in 1996,  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (“the Foundation”) was created to improve welfare and healthcare systems worldwide.  The Foundation is controlled by a Board of 13 Directors, including Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffet.  Since inception, the Foundation has given over $21 billion in grants.  Some problems that the Foundation strives to improve are: global health issues, which include HIV/AIDS, nutrition and vaccines; poverty development issues, which includes agricultural development; and education.

The Foundation was formed to invest in organizations that strive to improve society.   In 2008, the Foundation had program expenditures of over $3.6 billion.  These grants were for the Global Health Program, Global Development Program, and U.S. Programs.  Expenditures were increased by $600 million, from the previous year, even with the economic downturn. Funding organizations with more than just minimal payments will essentially give the Foundation a better chance to accomplish its goals.  One goal of Bill Gates, to be attained in the next 20 years, is to cut the death rate of children, under the age of 5 years old, in half.  To accomplish this, about 63% of funding is being allocated to the Global Health Program, which is focused on finding vaccines for 20 worldwide diseases.  Of these diseases, childhood deaths are mostly accounted from diarrheal diseases, malaria, and pneumonia.  Another goal is to triple the income, by improving agricultural output, of 150 million farming households in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, by 2025.  These are some of the poorest farming areas of the world.  The Global Development Program will assist these households with financial services, including savings and insurance.  This program received 18% of the total expenditures.   A third goal is to ensure 80% of U.S. students graduate high school, and are prepared to attend college by 2025.  The U.S. Program, allocated 19% of total expenditures, help ineffective school systems reorganize their teaching structure and curriculums. 

The Foundation recently gave $335 million to improve certain underperforming  public school systems in the United States.  These public school systems include counties in Tampa, Memphis, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles.  The funding is an attempt to raise teacher effectiveness in teaching their students.  With the added funding to the school systems, the superintendents will be able to improve the evaluation process of the instructors.  Student performance will now have a greater basis on these evaluations.  The primary goal is to motivate teachers to increase the inspiration in their students, and remove those who refuse to implement this innovation. 

The building in which the Foundation will reside also promotes its primary purpose. In 2011 a new campus will open for the Foundation.  The campus and visitor center will be located in Seattle Washington, where the visitor center alone is over 11,000 square feet.  Inside the center will be exhibits that show the experiences of the beneficiaries of the Foundation.  The new campus will have such architecture that will make it able to recycle millions of gallons of rainwater annually, and it will use a quarter of the energy that a building of its size usually requires.  For more information on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, please see its website at http://www.gatesfoundation.org/.

The following sites were used for information:

www.gatesfoundation.org

Tags: Fundraising, Gates Foundation, global health issues

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 5:36 pm and is filed under Consulting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.