In an extensive interview, the philanthropist expanded on the state of the couple’s partnership—and how this will now boost their foundation’s annual spending by 50% to $9 billion a year.
The Covid-19 pandemic, according to Bill Gates, remains “worse than people realize.” Ditto the Ukraine War, not to mention the economic downturn and “the political context where the willingness to think globally and do complex things, at least, feels like it’s at a pretty low period.” Gates says all of this a day before he’s set to announce, in juxtaposition, one of the most significant donations in the history of philanthropy—$20 billion, which he’s transferring this month to the eponymous foundation he co-runs, for now, with his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates.
That donation brings the Gateses’ lifetime irrevocable giving to $55 billion, now making them the biggest philanthropists of all time. They move ahead of friend Warren Buffett, who has given away $48 billion, most of it to the Gates Foundation.
The real-world impact of this gift is huge: It means the Gates Foundation, the world’s largest, will now jack up its spending by 50%, to $9 billion a year by 2026; that’s more than the aid spending of all but five or so countries, per Gates’ math. “This is going to supercharge or accelerate, charge, turbocharge basically all the work that we do,” says the Microsoft cofounder, during an exclusive interview yesterday.
There’s significance here beyond another $3 billion each year going toward gender equity, disease eradication and infant mortality, among other causes expressly pursued by the Gates Foundation. It’s an eleven-digit statement about the need for the very rich to deploy their philanthropy more aggressively, rather than let it pile up so that generations of administrators can dribble it out for centuries under their name. “It’s as though they’re trying to maximize how long their foundation can exist,” says Gates, “as opposed to, are there some high-impact things they can do now?”
GATES FOUNDATION SPENDING
The spending surge reinforces the “give while you live” principle, epitomized by Chuck Feeney, the 91-year-old Duty Free founder who in the course of giving away more than $8 billion took himself off The Forbes 400 list to something close to broke. Rather than wait for his death, Gates now says he fully intends to give his way off the Forbes billionaires list while he’s still alive. (Thanks to this most recent gift, he drops one spot to number five in the world, with a net worth of some $102 billion sitting outside the foundation.) “I’ll get myself out of the highly visible part of the list with just, say, two more gifts of this magnitude. I would get myself off the top part of the list,” says Gates. “Getting all the way off the list, that’s going to take me a while, but my direction of travel is clear.”
This $20 billion transfer also might be the most telling snapshot of the current situation between Gates and his ex-wife. The stakes are far beyond, say, the split between Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Scott—a clean financial break that has unleashed Scott to become arguably the most influential philanthropist of this decade. Because the Gateses comanage the world’s largest foundation, a driving force behind the Global Fund, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the pursuit to end polio, malaria and other diseases, the state of their disunion is a matter of international importance, especially since the couple sits in the middle of a two-year window to decide their collaborative future. If either declines to continue the status quo, Bill Gates will then fund her separate philanthropic activities.
According to Bill Gates, though, so far, so good. “I think all the evidence I see says that we’ll be able to run the foundation together forever.” He says he first consulted with her and with foundation CEO Mark Suzman about the $20 billion transfer three months ago, eventually bringing in Buffett and the foundation board. The economic tremors over that period did nothing to dissuade him of this course, in part with encouragement from Melinda French Gates.
While Melinda French Gates is still co-chair of the Gates Foundation, she is increasingly spending time on Pivotal Ventures, the company she founded in 2015 to accelerate social progress in the U.S.
Michel Euler/AP
“The good news is that even during the tough times of divorce, which are fortunately now more than a year behind us, we were able to work constructively at the foundation. It’s always surprised me how much Melinda and I agree on foundation stuff. And we have a few things where she knows better than I, and we just support each other.”
“She gets to speak for herself, but everything I see says that, ‘Hey, we’re the great partnership running the foundation, we’ve always been.’” Gates cited a recent trip that his ex-wife took to Africa. “So she went to Rwanda where the Commonwealth heads of state got together. She went to Senegal and she was writing back every day. I saw this, I think about that.”
So, given all this, and the abundance of problems to solve, why should the Gates Foundation even stop at $9 billion a year? Gates acknowledges that $10 billion offered a round number, but he’ll instead wait until 2026, when he’ll have visibility how the foundation has handled the spending ramp-up. “I’m not setting the $9 billion as a ceiling. I’ll know a lot more about the assets and how they’re performing between now and then.”
Gates also has Warren Buffett, who has instructed that the money he gives to the foundation—he’s given or earmarked $56 billion so far—gets fully deployed within ten years of his passing. (“‘Let the rich people of the future tackle the problems of the future,’ Buffett has told me on numerous occasions.”) It’s a torrent of philanthropic spending that lurks over the foundation, an altruistic challenge that the insiders planning it reportedly have dubbed “Project Lincoln.”
One twist: A recent Wall Street Journal report that suggests that Buffett may direct a final tranche that could eventually be tens of billions toward the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, founded by his late wife, with a big focus on abortion rights. Gates, who says that “I never want to behave in a way that I take Warren’s generosity for granted,” believes his foundation will still get the bulk of that money. “I have no reason to think that will change. I know I sent him this announcement a few days ago, and he’s super enthused about it.”
Warren Buffett has given away nearly $49 billion, of which $35.7 billion has gone to the Gates Foundation.
Timothy Archibald for forbes
Regardless, Buffett has had an impact. “I’m so influenced by Warren that I can hardly claim an original thought in some just means of understanding investment or general approach to philanthropy.” While Gates won’t commit to shuttering his foundation with the same time urgency that Buffett’s money will be deployed, he says that he could see a quarter-century wind down, to give time and projection for the longest-term projects.
The biggest clouds, Gates explains, are the poisonous politics both abroad, in democracy-threatened places like Lebanon and Sri Lanka, and domestic. For the latter, he cited a lunch he recently had with Bill and Hillary Clinton and one of his children, who asked: How did Arkansas go from being a blue state to a red state?
“The good news is that even during the tough times of divorce, we were able to work constructively at the foundation. It’s always surprised me how much Melinda and I agree on foundation stuff.”
“And they were brilliant on explaining what happened, but then, when we said, ‘Okay, and how do they go back to being a blue state?’ They were, like, ‘I’m glad somebody young is here who may have the patience or the new way in looking at U.S. politics.’”
Otherwise, across this interview and his Gates Notes blog release this morning, Gates tries to project positivity at a time when the world is craving it. He’s especially bullish about individualized digital breakthroughs in education, a stubborn area for the foundation over the years. “I’m more hopeful about that than ever. We really are, with some of these new math courses, really starting to see the impact we can have there.” Ditto in toilets, digital financial inclusion and other areas. “There’s lots of things I’m optimistic about,” says Gates. Fair enough. We’re about to see if an accelerated spend can significantly move the needle.