Gates Foundation

The Gates Foundation is a philanthropic organization that works to dramatically reduce disease and poverty and build a more equal world. Learn about our origins and how our approach has evolved since we started in 2000. We fund and bring together people and organizations in the global health and development sectors so we can collectively accelerate progress on urgent issues. In most cases, we directly contact organizations identified by our staff and invite them to submit funding proposals for work that addresses a specific foundation priority, such as nutrition, tuberculosis prevention, or safer childbirth. We also award some grants through posted requests for proposals , including through our Grand Challenges initiatives. We do not contribute to fundraising campaigns for organizations. No, this is a scam. These types of messages circulate by email, social media, postal mail, and phone in multiple languages and often include our foundation logo, photos, links, or other content from our website. We encourage you to report such fraudulent communications . Yes. To view job openings at the foundation and learn how to apply, visit the Careers section of our website. Our leaders are guided by the foundation’s mission to create a world where every person has the opportunity to live a healthy, productive life. The Gates Foundation was founded on a simple premise: that people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We’ve funded thousands of projects, large and small. Our database includes payments made and committed from 1994 onward. Learn how we identify grantees and form partnerships with private companies to address inequities. We are committed to providing clear, timely information on our finances and grantmaking efforts. See information about our annual reports, audited financial statements, charitable work with the private sector, and the Foundation Trust. For transparency, we share the policies and principles that help guide our work.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation places a major focus on helping to improve people's lives through health and learning. We will continue to look for strategic opportunities to extend the benefits of modern science and technology to people around the world, especially where poverty serves as an obstacle to participating in these benefits. As in the past, we will invest in partnerships with individuals and organizations that bring experience, expertise and commitment to their own efforts to help people through better health and learning. Key Dates: The enormous endowment of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation springs from the fortune of the computer magnate Bill Gates, Harvard University's most successful dropout. Gates left Harvard when he was still only 19 and founded a computer software company in 1975 with a longtime friend, Paul Allen. Their company, Microsoft , was chosen by IBM in 1980 to write the operating system for the computer maker's new personal computers. Microsoft 's operating system, called MS-DOS, became the standard operating system used on all IBM-compatible personal computers. Microsoft reaped vast amounts of money from the licensing of its system. In 1986, Microsoft went public. Gates's stake in the hugely profitable company made him a billionaire, and he was soon touted as the world's richest man. His fortune was estimated at around $65 billion at the end of the century. The company continued to grow and expand into the 1990s, as it developed or acquired many new software products. Microsoft was the world's leading software company, an indomitable competitor in the booming software industry. Microsoft generated great wealth, not only for Gates and cofounder Allen, but for scores of executives whose stock in the company made them rich. Many Microsoft executives were young, and they found themselves able to retire comfortably by age 40. According to a July 24, 2000 article in Time, dozens of Microsoft millionaires set up charitable foundations in the 1990s. "The status symbol of the '80s was a BMW. The status symbol of this decade is having your own foundation named after you," claimed a Microsoft employee quoted in the article. Gates himself became one of the richest men on the planet while he was still in his 30s. Gates was instrumental to the running of his company and seemed to have no plans to step back from the extraordinary business he had founded in his teens. Yet Microsoft's competitive clout in the 1990s won it much criticism. Antitrust allegations soured a major acquisition the company planned to make in 1995, and in 1998 the United States Justice Department filed a far-reaching antitrust suit against Microsoft. The perpetually boyish, bespectacled Gates was also at times reviled as the personification of a company perceived by some as greedy and rapacious. He was called a miser, for holding on to his personal fortune. Microsoft had initiated a giving program as early as 1983, which at first focused on funding computer and science education scholarships. Gates arranged for charitable giving of his own wealth in the mid-1990s, when he announced that he intended to give away most of his money before his death. Gates established a foundation for the charitable disbursement of much of his wealth in 1994, shortly after his marriage to Melinda French. This was known as the William H. Gates Foundation, and it was run by Gates's father, a Seattle lawyer, initially from the basement of his home. Apparently, Gates's marriage to Melinda French spurred the billionaire to find a way to give back some of his money. French grew up in Texas and studied computer science, engineering, and business at Duke University before joining Microsoft in 1987. While working as project manager at Microsoft, she also volunteered her time at a Seattle high school. On the eve of French and Gates's marriage, Gates's mother read the couple a letter that seemed to prod them to consider what to do with their plenty. As paraphr