In the Fall 1995 issue of Opportunist Magazine, Bill Gates was the Cover Story…

Where is he now?

On June 16, 2006, Gates announced that he would move to a part-time role within Microsoft, leaving day-to-day operations management, to begin a full-time career in philanthropy, but would remain as chairman.

Warren Buffet, Melinda and Bill Gates

Gates credited Warren Buffett with influencing his decision to commit himself to charitable causes.

Days later, Buffett announced that he would begin matching Gates’ contributions to the Gates Foundation, up to $1.5 billion per year in stock. Philanthropy In 2000, Gates and his wife founded the charitable Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The generosity and extensive philanthropy of David Rockefeller has been credited as a major influence.

Bill Gates and his father have met with Rockefeller several times, and have modeled their giving in part on the Rockefeller family’s philanthropic focus, namely those global problems that are ignored by governments and other organizations. The foundation’s grants have provided funds for college scholarships for under-represented minorities, AIDS prevention, diseases prevalent in third world countries, and other causes.

In 2000, the Gates Foundation endowed the University of Cambridge with $210 million for the Gates Cambridge Scholarships. The Foundation has also pledged over $7 billion to its various causes, including $1 billion to the United Negro College Fund. According to a 2004 Forbes magazine article, Gates gave away over $29 billion to charities from 2000 onwards. These donations are usually cited as sparking a substantial change in attitudes towards philanthropy among the very rich, with philanthropy becoming the norm.

A Letter From Bill and Melinda Gates

Every day, more than 1,000 children die because they didn’t get a 15-cent measles vaccine. Almost 3 billion people around the world live on less than $2 per day. Here in the United States, only one-third of
the students who start the ninth grade will graduate from high school with the skills they need to succeed in college and work. A disproportionate number of those who fall behind will be African American and Hispanic.

Our foundation and our partners are trying to solve these problems because we believe that all lives have equal value, no matter where they are being lived—in rich countries with high-quality health care or poor countries with almost none; in well-off suburbs with shiny new high schools or in disadvantaged
communities where most kids drop out.

We also believe that from those to whom much is given, much is expected. We benefited from great schools, great health care, and a vibrant economic system. That is why we feel a tremendous responsibility to give back to society.

Starting from these core values, our foundation is guided by some key principles.

First, we concentrate on a few areas of giving so we can learn about the best approaches and have the greatest possible impact. We choose these issues by asking: which problems affect the most people, and which have been neglected in the past?

Our Global Health Program focuses on diseases and health conditions that cause the most illness and death and receive the least attention and resources—diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria that barely exist in rich countries but still kill millions in the developing world. And AIDS, which infects 5 million new people every year, the vast majority of them in poor countries.

As an example, our Global Development Program works with an organization called Opportunity International on a relatively simple technology that is helping women in Malawi save their children from destitution. In Malawi, life expectancy is about 37 years. When a man dies, his parents and siblings often seize his possessions and his money, leaving his wife and children with nothing.

Opportunity International helps by distributing “smart cards.” These cards are similar to our ATM cards, and they let women keep money in super-secure savings accounts that are protected by a thumbprint scanner. Only the cardholder herself can access the account, using her unique thumbprint. Smart cards have become so popular in Malawi that they’re now regularly given as gifts at wedding showers.

Finally, our foundation is deeply committed to the importance of partnerships. All of the issues we’re tackling will require the talents and resources of many people and many different organizations.

These are just some of the ways we think about the work we do. We are optimistic about the future. We were deeply gratified by the gift Warren Buffett gave our foundation in June 2006, which will allow us to roughly double our grantmaking starting in 2009. Warren’s incredible gift inspires us and makes
us even more aware of the opportunity and deep responsibility we have to make a lasting impact for people in need.

Some of the problems we work on already have solutions, and our focus needs to be on getting those solutions into the hands of the people who need them most. Other problems have never been given the attention they deserve, and we believe focused efforts can lead to amazing advances. The challenges we face are great, but so is the opportunity to improve people’s lives.

Bill Gates
Melinda French Gates