Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, philanthropic organization that became the largest endowed foundation in the world with assets of about $21 billion when it was founded in January 2000.

William Henry Gates III, known as Bill Gates, and his wife, Melinda, created the foundation. Using the vast wealth he earned from the Microsoft Corporation, the computer software company he cofounded in 1975, Bill Gates began his organized philanthropic interests in 1994 with the William H. Gates Foundation. This foundation was focused on global health issues. Three years later, Gates founded the Gates Library Foundation, which was renamed the Gates Learning Foundation in 1999. The same year the William H. Gates Foundation was renamed the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In January 2000 the Learning Foundation combined with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

A major goal of the foundation is to bring medical advances and information technology to people living in poverty. Global health initiative grants help bring vaccines to the developing world and support ways to stop the transmission of diseases such as AIDS and tuberculosis. Global health grants also target reproductive health and infant mortality issues in developing countries.

The AIDS epidemic has received special attention. In July 2006 the foundation announced a donation of $287 million to fund research into development of a vaccine against HIV. To date, attempts to develop an HIV/AIDS vaccine have been unsuccessful and the new grants are aimed at fostering innovation and cooperation among different groups of researchers. The foundation has also promoted research into microbicides that can protect women against infection by HIV. Other projects include establishing a training center in Africa for health workers who care for HIV/AIDS patients.

The Gates Foundation provides more than a third of the annual funding worldwide for research into treatment and prevention of malaria. In 2005 the foundation awarded $258 million in grants for malaria research, including more than $100 million toward development of a vaccine.

The foundation’s education programs, which were launched in early 2000, committed $350 million to three areas: development of model schools and school districts, professional development for educators, and higher education scholarships, especially for talented low-income students. The foundation’s education efforts address inequities in underserved school districts, particularly those in black and Hispanic communities. The foundation promotes the idea of creating high schools with small student bodies and personalized learning as an important education reform. The foundation also seeks to bring Internet access to all public libraries serving low-income communities in the United States and Canada. As of November 2002, that goal had been largely realized with more than 95 percent of public libraries in the United States offering free Internet access.

Bill Gates’s father, attorney William H. Gates, Sr., runs the foundation, which is based in Seattle, Washington. In June 2006 Bill Gates announced that he would begin transitioning from a full-time role at Microsoft to a full-time role at the foundation. The transition was to be completed by July 2008. Also in June 2006 American financier Warren Buffett announced that he would give a major portion of his personal fortune to the foundation, virtually doubling its yearly spending. His donations will come in the form of stocks and will rank as one of the largest charitable gifts in history. Buffett is also to become a trustee of the Gates Foundation.