Bill and Melinda Gates (Founders, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)

William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate, investor, author, philanthropist, and co-founder of the Microsoft Corporation along with Paul Allen.

In 1975, Gates and Allen launched Microsoft, which became the world's largest PC software company. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, CEO and chief software architect, while also being the largest individual shareholder until May 2014.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. He has been criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive. This opinion has been upheld by numerous court rulings. Later in his career, Gates pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors. He donated large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which was established in 2000.

Since 1987, Gates has been included in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people, an index of the wealthiest documented individuals, excluding and ranking against those with wealth that is not able to be completely ascertained. From 1995 to 2009, he held the Forbes title of the richest person in the world all but four of those years, and held it consistently from 2014–July 2017, with an estimated net worth of US$89.9 billion as of October 2017. However, on July 27, 2017, and since October 27, 2017, he has been surpassed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, who has an estimated net worth of US$93.9 billion. In 2009, Gates and Warren Buffett founded The Giving Pledge, whereby they and other billionaires pledge to give at least half of their wealth to philanthropy. The foundation works to save lives and improve global health, and is working with Rotary International to eliminate polio.

Melinda Ann Gates  French; born August 15, 1964, is an American philanthropist, former Microsoftemployee, and co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She worked at Microsoft, where she was project manager for Microsoft Bob, Encarta and Expedia.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), also known as the Gates Foundation, is a private foundation founded by Billand Melinda Gates. It was launched in 2000 and is said to be the largest private foundation in the US, holding $38 billion in assets . The primary aims of the foundation are, globally, to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty, and in America, to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology. The foundation, based in Seattle, Washington, is controlled by its three trustees: Bill and Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett. Other principal officers include Co-Chair William H. Gates, Sr. and Chief Executive Officer Susan Desmond-Hellmann.

It had an endowment of US$44.3 billion as of December 31, 2014. The scale of the foundation and the way it seeks to apply business techniques to giving makes it one of the leaders in venture philanthropy,though the foundation itself notes that the philanthropic role has limitations. In 2007, its founders were ranked as the second most generous philanthropists in America, and Warren Buffett the first. As of May 16, 2013, Bill Gates had donated US$28 billion to the foundation. Since its foundation, the foundation has endowed and supported a broad range of social, health, and education developments including the establishment of the Gates Cambridge Scholarships at Cambridge University.

History

In 1997, the foundation was formed as the William H. Gates Foundation.During the foundation's following years, funding grew to US$2 billion. On June 15, 2006, Gates announced his plans to transition out of a day-to-day role with Microsoft, effective July 31, 2008, to allow him to devote more time to working with the foundation.

In 2005, Bill and Melinda Gates, along with the musician Bono, were named by Time as Persons of the Year 2005 for their charitable work. In the case of Bill and Melinda Gates, the work referenced was that of this foundation.

In April 2010, Gates was invited to visit and speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he asked the students to take on the hard problems of the world in their futures. He also explained the nature and philosophy of his philanthropic endeavors.

In 2010, the foundation's founders started the Commission on Education of Health Professionals for the 21st Century, entitled "Transforming education to strengthen health systems in an interdependent world.

A 2011 survey of grantees found that many believed the foundation did not make its goals and strategies clear and sometimes did not understand those of the grantees; that the foundation's decision- and grantmaking procedures were too opaque; and that its communications could be more consistent and responsive. The foundation's response was to improve the clarity of its explanations, make "orientation calls" to grantees upon awarding grants, tell grantees who their foundation contact is, give timely feedback when they receive a grantee report, and establish a way for grantees to provide anonymous or attributed feedback to the foundation.The foundation also launched a podcast series.

In 2013, Hillary Clinton launched a partnership between the foundation and the Clinton Foundation to gather and study data on the progress of women and girls around the world since the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference On Women in Beijing.This is called "No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project.

Front building of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle

Activities

Program areas and grant database

To maintain its status as a charitable foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation must donate funds equal to at least 5 percent of its assets each year. As of April 2014, the foundation is organized into four program areas under chief executive officer Susan Desmond-Hellmann, who "sets strategic priorities, monitors results, and facilitates relationships with key partners"

• Global Development Division
• Global Health Division
• United States Division
• Global Policy & Advocacy Division

The foundation maintains an online database of grants on its website which includes for each grant the name of the grantee organization, the purpose of the grant and the amount This database is publicly 

available.

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Open access policy

In November 2014, the Gates Foundation announced that they were adopting an open access (OA) policy for publications and data, "to enable the unrestricted access and reuse of all peer-reviewed published research funded by the foundation, including any underlying data sets".This move has been widely applauded by those who are working in the area of capacity building and knowledge sharing. Its terms have been called the most stringent among similar OA policies. As of January 1, 2015 their Open Access policy is effective for all new agreements In March 2017, it was confirmed that the open access policy, Gates Open Research would be based on the same initiative launched in 2016 by Wellcome Trust in their Wellcome Open Research policy launched in partnership with F1000 Research.

Funds for grants in developing countries

The following table lists the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's committed funding as recorded in their International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) publications. The Gates Foundation announced in October 2013 that it would join the IATI. The IATI publications only include a subset of Gates Foundation grants (mainly excluding grants to developed countries), and contain few grants before 2009 (which are excluded from the table). The Gates Foundation states on the IATI Registry site that "reporting starts from 2009 and excludes grants related to our US programs and grants that if published could harm our employees, grantees, partners, or the beneficiaries of our work".

	Committed funding (US$ millions)
DAC 5 Digit Sector[41]	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	Sum
Infectious disease control	256.9	720.3	462.8	528.7	1248.3	1271.8	1097.5	5586.4
Malaria control	324.5	101.7	133.6	75.5	302.4	377.6	140.8	1456.1
STD control including HIV/AIDS	175.5	26.9	291.4	199.7	184.4	264.4	165.7	1308.0
Tuberculosis control	69.2	211.1	59.5	273.9	135.3	100.1	244.8	1094.0
Reproductive health care	173.8	66.8	77.4	165.2	84.9	207.6	130.0	905.8
Agricultural research	84.7	27.8	196.2	192.8	207.1	14.7	83.9	807.2
Family planning	104.5	21.2	21.4	49.3	165.0	145.8	181.7	688.9
Health policy and administrative management	119.3	14.3	145.7	75.5	61.1	113.4	130.3	659.5
Agricultural development	5.2	30.0	0.0	35.0	0.0	325.1	86.1	481.3
Agricultural policy and administrative management	72.9	30.0	77.5	77.1	86.2	19.7	96.9	460.3
Promotion of development awareness	47.2	45.0	35.5	41.7	124.4	61.7	80.7	436.2
Basic health care	22.3	23.9	43.7	73.2	1.7	45.6	206.3	416.7
Basic nutrition	19.2	15.7	40.9	51.5	63.7	55.9	148.2	395.2
Basic sanitation	10.1	34.9	82.9	74.9	59.1	48.7	64.9	375.5
Financial policy and administrative management	29.0	18.4	9.8	8.9	70.1	32.9	53.4	222.5
Other	487.5	273.8	2208.9	260.2	332.1	433.3	2195.7	6191.5
Total	2001.9	1662.0	3887.2	2183.0	3125.9	3518.4	5106.6	21485.1

Awards

• In 2006, the foundation won the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation.
• In 2007, then-President of India Pratibha Devisingh Patil presented the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
• In recognition for the foundation's philanthropic activities in India, Bill and Melinda Gates jointly received India's third highest civilian honor Padma Bhushan in 2015.
• On November 22, 2016, President Barack Obama honored Bill and Melinda Gates with The Presidential Medal of Freedom for their philanthropic effort.