The philanthropist entrepreneur: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
by Sophie Boutillier (LABRII, University of Littoral Côte d’Opale and RNI)
Like Rockefeller at the end of his life, after he had managed to be the richest man in the world and had stopped running his enterprise, Bill Gates and his wife created in January 2000 a philanthropist foundation: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It is the result of the merger of two foundations: the first, created by Bill Gates Father in 1994 with the aims “health in the world” and “the needs of the north-west Pacific Ocean communities”; the other, founded in 1997 is the Gates foundation for libraries. In 1999, the latter became the Gates foundation for knowledge and then, the father’s foundation was renamed: Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.
Its aim is to provide the population of the world with innovations in the field of health (support to development programs of medicines in the third world countries) and in knowledge acquisition (support to libraries). But recently the Foundation has also turned to green technologies. In 2006 more than 240 persons were working for it. It is funded by Bill and Melinda Gates. This represents huge sums of money as their annual donations exceed the expenses of World Health Organization (WHO), but various contributors also fund the foundation, as for example the American billionaire Warren Buffet.
The sums of money invested by the Gates Foundation are impressive. In January 2010, the Gates announced that they will spend 10 billion dollars over 10 years for the development and the distribution of vaccines for children of the third world countries, amount added to the 4.5 billion dollars donated by the Foundation during the ten last years (Le Monde, 14/07/2010). B. Gates also played a major role in the creation of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), a private-public partnership. In June 2010, M. Gates announced that the foundation will invest 1,5 billion dollars between 2010 and 2014 to support innovative projects in family planning, care of pregnant women, newborns, children and nutrition. The Gates Foundation has committed hundreds of millions of dollars for the fight against Malaria, tuberculosis, programs of prevention and treatment of AIDS in India and Africa.
B. Gates attended the international conference of Vienna in July 2010. His speech somewhat cooled the assembly. After having reminded that “world has historic opportunity to change the face of AIDS” (Libération, 20/07/2010), he stressed that “we have to be honest: we cannot continue to spend resources allocated to research against AIDS as we do today. We can continue to raise funds, but we must also ensure that we make full use of every dollar and that we make good use of every effort made. It is needed to target, through statistical methods and modeling, the regions of the world at high risk”. B. Gates particularly insisted on the role of prevention, a more profitable investment.
Like J. Rockefeller, B. Gates manages his foundation as a company, with the same rigor. The financed programs are carefully chosen. Philanthropy is not synonymous to wasting. Though, nowadays, B. Gates has become the biggest global private funder for the fight against AIDS, and the second funder of the WHO. As a matter of fact he plays a leading role in the fight against AIDS worldwide, directing research in this area, at a time when political leaders have withdrawn from this fight.
J. Rockefeller had created his foundation in the late 19th century, like Carnegie and many others in the so-called period of “savage capitalism”, while the workers’ demonstrations were increasing (events that are the origin of the festival from May 1st workers in the 1880s). This is not by philanthropy that these billionaires became philanthropists but because they refused the interference of the State in their businesses. Moreover, philanthropy also creates markets, and this is what Bill and Melinda have well understood thanks to John’s teaching.
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Title: Journal of Innovation Economics (JIE)
Publication of the issue n°32 of Innovations, cahiers d’économie de l’innovation, 2010/2
