In a pioneering step that foretells the next page of world charity, Bill Gates has declared that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will be closed down forever, on December 31, 2045. The decision is a sharp acceleration of Gates’ long-standing devotion to give away most of his fortune while he is alive. Over the next two decades, Gates has planned to give away practically all of his remaining wealth, estimated at $200 billion, through the work of the foundation on global health, education, and poverty alleviation.
Gates made this decision in a personal essay he published on the foundation’s website. When summing up his career as a philanthropist, Gates admitted that he was inspired by one of Andrew Carnegie’s famous quotations: “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced” (Aristotle). He wants to make sure that no such tag fits him.
Gates Foundation Shift: From Perpetual Legacy to 2045 Sunset
When Bill and Melinda Gates established the foundation in 2000, the initial intention was to run it for decades after their demise. Gates, though, has since changed that vision. He worked with the foundation’s board and leadership to determine that a focus of the foundation’s giving for the next 20 years would have a greater global impact. In turn, this timeline also creates clarity and a sense of urgency for partners and grantees and enables them to prepare with certainty.
Gates said, “There are too many urgent problems to address for me to cling to resources that might be used to benefit people.”
Gates Foundation’s $100 Billion Legacy: Health, Education & More
The Gates Foundation has given away more than $100 Billion since its founding years into such causes as global vaccination programs, disease prevention, agriculture, and education. It has been critical in the fight against polio and vaccines for rotavirus and malaria, as well as supporting healthcare systems in low-income nations. In the United States, it has injected massive capital into K–12 public schools, with an emphasis on enhanced math teaching and teacher training as well as college graduation rates.
Gates stressed that this work could only be achieved with the strong partnerships, which included Warren Buffet who donated billions of dollars to the fund, a worldwide pack of researchers, governments, nonprofits and health workers.
Bill Gates’ 2045 Philanthropy Plan: 3 Key Goals Before Closure
In the future, the foundation has also outlined three key objectives that it will focus on: ending deaths from preventable causes of mothers and children, eradication of lethal infectious diseases such as polio and malaria and lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Gates holds the view that if medicine makes advances, there is digital infrastructure as well as advances in artificial intelligence, then, these targets are possible.
To address this, the foundation will double annual donations from virtually $6 billion to around $9 billion by 2026. Gates prays that this will work in favour of reducing global inequality and forever replacing systems even as the foundation itself closes its doors.
Beyond the Foundation
Despite his philanthropy still having the Gates Foundation as the main focus, the latter pays for activities outside the structure. He promotes clean energy innovation and climate resilience via Breakthrough Energy. Under TerraPower, he is promoting the use of safe nuclear power technology. Gates still invests in Alzheimer’s research as he also continues to see some progress in treatments that may radically change care worldwide.
Profits from these businesses if successful, will find their way back into the foundation before it sunsets in 2045.
Bill Gates’ Final Chapter: “Now Giving is Better Than Later Giving”
This plan, according to Gates, was “the last chapter of my career,” but he made it plain that he has no intention of slowing down. “I am lucky to wake up every day full of energy to go to work,” he said. His word to other rich people is straightforward: Now giving can do better than later giving.
