Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation headquarters in 2022
Abbreviation	BMGF
Formation	2000; 25 years ago (2000)
Founders	Bill Gates Melinda French Gates
Type	Non-operating private foundation
Legal status	501(c)(3) organization
Purpose	Healthcare, education, fighting poverty
Headquarters	Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Area served	Worldwide
Method	Donations, grants
Key people	Melinda French Gates (co-chair) Mark Suzman (CEO)
Endowment	$67.3 billion (2022)^[update]
Employees	1,818 (2023)
Formerly called	William H. Gates Foundation, Gates Learning Foundation

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is a huge American charity started by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. It began in 2000 by combining two older foundations. Its main office is in Seattle, Washington, U.S. The foundation is one of the biggest charities in the world, with about $67.3 billion to help people.

The main goals of the foundation are to make healthcare better and reduce extreme poverty around the world. It also works to improve education and access to technology in the U.S. Bill and Melinda French Gates have given billions of dollars to the foundation. They are known for using business ideas to help solve big problems. The foundation has supported many projects in health, education, and social development, like the Gates Cambridge Scholarships at Cambridge University.

History

The foundation's main office in Seattle, seen from the Space Needle

The foundation started in 1994 as the William H. Gates Foundation. In 2006, Bill Gates announced he would spend more time working with the foundation. He stepped down from his daily role at Microsoft in 2008.

In 2005, Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, along with musician Bono, were named "Persons of the Year" by Time magazine. This was because of their important charity work with the foundation.

Over the years, the foundation has had several leaders. Patty Stonesifer was the first CEO until 2008. Then Jeff Raikes took over in 2008, followed by Susan Desmond-Hellmann in 2014. In 2020, Mark Suzman became the CEO.

In 2010, the founders started a group to improve health education for the future. The foundation also works to be open about its activities. In 2013, it joined the International Aid Transparency Initiative to show where its money goes.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the foundation helped a lot. It already knew which groups were working on health issues, so it could quickly send money where it was needed most. The foundation has given more than $2 billion to help with the COVID-19 response.

Warren Buffett's Gifts

In 2006, Warren Buffett, a famous investor, promised to give a large part of his wealth to the Gates Foundation. He gives shares from his company, Berkshire Hathaway, every year. These gifts are meant to help the foundation give away even more money each year. Buffett set rules to make sure his gifts are used to increase the foundation's charitable work, not just its savings. He has continued to donate billions of dollars over the years.

Spending All the Money

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has a special plan. Unlike most big charities that plan to last forever, this foundation plans to spend all its money. It aims to use all its resources within 20 years after Bill's and Melinda's deaths. This plan helps make sure the money is used for good causes quickly. It also helps keep the foundation's costs low.

Activities

To remain a charity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation must give away at least five percent of its money each year. The foundation is divided into different teams that focus on specific areas:

Global Development (fighting poverty worldwide)
Global Health (improving health worldwide)
United States (focusing on U.S. issues)
Global Policy & Advocacy (working with governments and other groups)
Global Growth & Opportunity (finding new ways to help people)

The foundation also has a website where you can see all the grants (money given) it has made.

Open Access Policy

Life expectancy in 1800, 1950, and 2015 – a visual from Our World in Data

In 2014, the Gates Foundation announced a new rule for research it funds. It said that all research papers and data from projects it supports must be available for free to everyone. This is called "open access." This helps scientists and others around the world use the information to make new discoveries. The foundation also supports "Our World in Data", a website that shares a lot of information for free.

Global Development Efforts

The foundation works to fight extreme poverty around the world. Here are some examples:

Gates Cambridge Scholarships

In 2000, Bill Gates created the Gates Cambridge Scholarships. These scholarships help talented students from the U.S. and other countries study at Cambridge University in England. It's one of the best universities in the world. The scholarship is very competitive, and only a small number of students are chosen each year. It helps about 100 new graduate students get funding to study at Cambridge.

Selwyn College, part of the University of Cambridge

Helping with Money

The foundation gives money to groups that help people get financial services. This includes:

Helping countries create savings accounts and insurance for people living on very little money.
Supporting research on how to give small loans (called microfinance) to people in poor countries.
Giving money to groups like Pro Mujer and Grameen Foundation that offer financial help and healthcare to women entrepreneurs in Latin America.

Improving Farming

The foundation also supports projects to improve farming, especially in Africa and Asia:

It has given money to the International Rice Research Institute to help grow more rice. This is important because the world needs much more rice in the coming years. They even developed "Golden Rice" to help with vitamin A deficiency.
It partners with other groups to improve farming science and help small farms in Africa grow more food.
It has helped develop the cashew industry in Africa to increase farmers' incomes.

Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH)

The "sanitation value chain" used by the Gates Foundation to show how they approach sanitation, from collection to reuse.

An example of new toilet technology: The off-grid Nano Membrane Toilet prototype.

The foundation has a big program called WASH, which stands for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene. It started in 2005 and focuses on helping people in poor areas get clean and safe toilets. Many people around the world don't have access to good sanitation.

The foundation focuses on new ways to handle waste without needing big sewer systems. It has given hundreds of millions of dollars to research and projects in this area.

Reinvent the Toilet Challenge

A simple, low-tech toilet design being funded: the Earth Auger toilet.

In 2011, the foundation started the "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge." The goal was to create new, better toilet designs for the billions of people who don't have safe toilets. These new toilets should:

Remove germs from human waste.
Turn waste into useful things like energy or clean water.
Work "off-the-grid" (without needing water pipes, sewers, or electricity).
Cost less than 5 cents per person per day.

Many universities and research teams around the world have received money to work on these new toilet ideas. Some projects are even trying to turn human waste into energy or drinking water!

A Microbial fuel cell that turns urine into electricity (from research at the University of the West of England, UK).

Other Global Help

The foundation also helps with other global problems:

It gave money to help victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and the 2005 Kashmir earthquake.
In 2014, it provided $50 million to help fight the deadly Ebola disease in West Africa.
In 2021, it pledged money to help cover cuts in UK foreign aid.
It is working with Mastercard and GAVI to create a program called Mastercard Well Pass. This program will link vaccination records with cashless payments in West Africa.

Global Health Efforts

The Global Health Program works to improve health around the world. Here are some of its key efforts:

Fighting Diseases: The foundation has given billions of dollars to fight diseases like AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. It is the largest donor to research on diseases that affect poor people.
Vaccinations: With the foundation's help, deaths from measles in Africa have dropped by 90 percent since 2000. It has also given huge amounts of money to the GAVI vaccine alliance to help vaccinate children worldwide.
Polio Eradication: The foundation has provided millions of dollars to help get rid of poliomyelitis (polio) completely.
HIV Research: It has funded many research teams around the world to find new ways to fight HIV/AIDS.
Cheaper TB Tests: The foundation helped make a high-tech test for tuberculosis (TB) much cheaper. This test can find TB faster and also see if the disease is resistant to medicines.
Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs): The foundation works with other groups to fight 17 diseases that often affect poor people but don't get much attention. It has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars for this effort.
COVID-19 Response: Since 2020, the foundation has given hundreds of millions of dollars to help with the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes:
- COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator: It helped create this group with Wellcome and Mastercard to speed up the search for new medicines to treat COVID-19.
- It has supported many vaccine candidates and research into how countries responded to the pandemic.
- It has also funded research to test how well COVID-19 vaccines work in places like South Africa.
The Big Catch-up: In 2023, the foundation joined other global health groups to launch "The Big Catch-up." This effort aims to help millions of children get vaccinated again after many missed their shots during the COVID-19 pandemic.

United States Efforts

The United States Program focuses on issues within the U.S.:

Libraries

In 1997, the foundation started a program to help U.S. public libraries. Its goal was to make sure that if you could get to a public library, you could use the internet. The foundation has given money, computers, software, and training to libraries across the country. This has helped libraries move into the digital age.

Education

The Gates Foundation works to improve education in the U.S., from kindergarten through college. It supports ideas like evaluating teachers and having more charter schools. Some of its education projects include:

Gates Millennium Scholars: It has given $1.5 billion for scholarships to help high-achieving minority students go to college.
New Schools: The foundation has invested over $250 million to create new small schools and reduce class sizes.
D.C. Achievers Scholarships: In 2007, it announced a $122 million plan to help poor students in Washington, D.C., go to college.
University Support: It has given large donations to universities like Cornell University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Carnegie Mellon University for new buildings and programs.
University Scholars Program: It created a scholarship program at Melinda Gates's old university, Duke University, to provide full scholarships to talented students.

Pacific Northwest

The foundation also supports local projects in the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S., where its headquarters are located. For example, it donated $15 million to the Computer History Museum in 2005.

Awards

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has received many awards for its important work:

In 2006, it won the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation.
In 2007, the President of India gave the foundation the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development.
In 2015, Bill and Melinda Gates received India's third highest civilian honor, the Padma Bhushan, for their charity work in India.
In 2016, President Barack Obama gave Bill and Melinda Gates The Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is one of the highest awards a civilian can receive in the U.S., for their efforts to help people around the world.

Images for kids

The "sanitation value chain" used by the Gates Foundation to show how they approach sanitation, from collection to reuse.
An example of new toilet technology: The off-grid Nano Membrane Toilet prototype.
A simple, low-tech toilet design being funded: the Earth Auger toilet.
A Microbial fuel cell that turns urine into electricity (from research at the University of the West of England, UK).