Today is Bill Gates’ last day at Microsoft — and everybody is talking about it.
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| Photo: gatesfoundation.org |
He will now concentrate his time at the foundation he heads with his wife, Melinda. The Associated Press says that he won’t be managing the day-to-day details but “sitting down with government, business and nonprofit leaders to advocate for them to spend more money on world health, hunger and poverty.”
Two of the foundation’s key areas are global health and global development. A Seattle Times story says that he’s first going to China, where the foundation ”will move forward on several key health programs, including HIV/AIDS prevention and a new push to curb smoking — and try to tap China’s expertise to improve African agriculture.”
In 2006, billionaire Warren Buffett announced he is giving away most of his fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which was already the biggest grantmaker by far and now has approximately $3 billion more to give away every year.
A columnist wrote in the Chronicle of Philanthropy that effectively giving away that much money won’t be easy:
Indeed, for many years, governments have been spending much more to achieve many of the same ambitious goals with little to show for their efforts. [...] Some problems, in other words, may be so intractable and complex that they cannot really be solved.
Join the conversation: How will this transition affect grantmaking at the world’s biggest foundation? Can the Gates Foundation, or philanthropy in general, solve such huge issues as eradicating malaria and AIDS, or eliminating poverty?
- Crystal Colby, MCF’s web communications associate
