Gates Foundation, a force in WA and the world, charts its future and its end

The Gates Foundation — the homegrown philanthropic force that has funneled billions into the region and across the world since its founding 25 years ago — will sunset in 2045, Bill Gates announced Thursday. 

Gates said he will give away nearly all his remaining tech fortune, about $107 billion, as his foundation accelerates donations in global health efforts. The foundation expects to ultimately disburse more than $200 billion between today and its eventual closure, double its giving over the past quarter-century. 

“It’s kind of thrilling to have that much to be able to put into these causes,” Gates said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Gates, who was born in Seattle and co-founded Microsoft 50 years ago, launched the foundation with his then-wife Melinda French Gates in 2000 when he was the richest man in the world. The pair were inspired by an article about millions of children in poor countries dying from diseases that were easily treated in wealthier countries.

The foundation was initially intending to wrap up its giving decades after Gates’ and French Gates’ deaths. But Gates said in a statement Thursday “there are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people.”

In 2021 French Gates and Bill Gates divorced and French Gates has since left the foundation.

“People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them,” Bill Gates wrote in a blog post published Thursday.

Today, the Seattle-based foundation is one of the world’s largest and most powerful charitable institutions, taking a leading role in addressing some of the planet’s biggest challenges, including reducing infant mortality, developing vaccines for infectious diseases and finding an HIV cure. 

As it looks to the next two decades, the foundation aims to “double down” on its commitments to reducing the number of preventable child deaths, eradicating polio and malaria, and creating “opportunities for that next generation to not just survive but thrive,” said CEO Mark Suzman in an interview Thursday. 

Here in Washington, the foundation — which employs more than 2,100 employees, a majority of whom work out of the foundation’s headquarters near Seattle Center — has pumped more than $8 billion in grants to nonprofits and institutions since its founding. 

A number of groups based in the state have fueled the foundation’s global health work and will continue to play a major role over the next 20 years, Suzman said. 

“When we talk about the global health impact story, we’re really talking about a story where the Greater Seattle area has had an impact that is much beyond Seattle, and really is being felt worldwide,” Suzman said. 

The Seattle-based global health organization PATH, for instance, has been instrumental in rolling out public health programs and vaccines in developing countries, Suzman said. 

“We’ve seen up close the impact the Gates Foundation has had on people around the world,” PATH President and CEO Nikolaj Gilbert said in a statement.

“Their decision to sunset is a powerful example of what it means to lead with purpose. … The next two decades give us an important window to find new solutions together and save more lives.”

The University of Washington has received $1.5 billion to date from the foundation, according to university figures, powering research into detecting diseases, developing drugs and more. UW’s Institute for Protein Design, whose director recently won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, has been a regular collaborator with the foundation. 

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, also based at UW, was founded in 2007 with a $105 million grant from the Gates Foundation. About 60% of the institute’s funding comes from the foundation, said IHME director Dr. Christopher Murray.

Today, the institute is at the “cutting edge of how you use data to track progress,” Suzman said, providing vital health information and forecasts to governments and research institutions around the world.

“We’re hoping to keep providing that essential, independent, science-based measurements,” Murray said. “In a setting where money is going away for global health … Bill’s commitment is even more important for maintaining progress.”

Even outside of global health issues, nearly every corner of the Seattle region has been touched by the philanthropic heavyweight. For example, in 2022, the Gates Foundation committed $75 million toward efforts to boost the number of students enrolled in postsecondary education.

Over the years, school districts, tribes, health centers, libraries, housing developers, museums and even Seattle’s waterfront have all received funding from the Gates Foundation. The foundation is also a major funder of The Seattle Times’ Education Lab.

Last year, the Gates Foundation donated $1 million to the Rainier Valley Food Bank, the busiest food bank in the Seattle area serving over one million meals annually. The donation went toward the nonprofit’s $17 million expansion project in South Seattle that is set to open this summer.

“That million dollars was transformational, and we’re incredibly grateful,” said development director Kathy Ulrich. 

Though local funding accounts for a fraction of the foundation’s work, “so many different small and large organizations benefit from Gates’ investment in the Pacific Northwest,” said Akhtar Badshah, a distinguished practitioner at UW who studies social impact. 

“Whether it was the University (of Washington), whether it was social impact organizations, whether it’s the museums or the arts or the culture or the waterfront … Bill has just played his part,” said Badshah, who ran corporate philanthropy at Microsoft for 10 years.

The foundation’s commitment to investing in the region can be traced back to by the philosophy of Gates’ father, Bill Gates Sr., Badshah said. In the early years of the foundation, the elder Gates, who died in 2020, advocated for funding to go toward local efforts aimed at reducing family homelessness, Suzman said.  

A Bremerton-born lawyer, Gates Sr. was among Seattle’s most prominent civic leaders who championed higher education and support for marginalized communities. The building of the University of Washington law school from which he graduated in 1950 bears his name.

Mary Gates, Bill Gates’ mother, was also a major player in corporate and civic circles, and served as a regent of the university for 18 years. She died in 1994.

In a statement, UW President Ana Mari Cauce said the Gates Foundation announcement Thursday is “a reflection of the service the Gates family has long embodied in our community.” 

“We are so grateful for the Gates Foundation’s decades long, lifesaving work to support the health of all people, here in the state of Washington, across the U.S. and around the world,” she said.  

Amid dramatic funding cuts by the Trump administration, funders need to step up to support local organizations the “care for our kids, feed our hungry, and protect our fundamental rights,” said Carmen Rojas, CEO and president of the Marguerite Casey Foundation, a Seattle-based philanthropy group.

“Leaders in our sector are aligned in our commitment to protect organizations that provide critical — often lifesaving — services to people across the country,” Rojas said in a statement.

Badshah, who works with several organizations currently funded by the Gates Foundation, said he’s a proponent of foundations sunsetting. People with significant wealth should spend it “in a prescribed period of time,” he said. 

“This is a fantastic decision,” he said “It actually shows commitment to today and not to the distant future, and gives everyone involved in this space something to get reenergized and refocused on, and to use that time to really make some change.”

Material from The Associated Press and The Seattle Times archives was used in this report.