Over the past quarter of the century, Bill Gates has been the donor behind what has long been one of the largest private charitable institutions in the country, a dwarf giant for a long time almost All other charitable institutions.
The Gates Foundation worked, in its commitment to large and professional employees, driven by quantitative measuring data, and with its focus on global health, it was a model for many other donors. And Kafr, Gates has long been the world Most recognized for freedomIn terms of the interest of the media, awards, and general knowledge. As one of the founders participating in Give a pledgeThe campaign to obtain billionaires in the world to donate more than half of their wealth for charitable reasons, was also the most specific individual with the efforts made to form global charitable standards in the era of super wealth. (Disclosure: I am an employee at the Urban Institute, who receives funding from the Gates Foundation.)
This, in fact, is the best context to understand the importance of modern Gates advertisement It will give almost all this wealth to the Gates Foundation over the next twenty years, and that the Foundation “will close its doors” by the end of 2045, after all this money. With Gates Special wealth A runway in the north of 100 billion dollars, and its founder sits on gifts More than 75 billion dollarsGates estimates that his organization “will spend more than 200 billion dollars from now and 2045.” As I explained: “I decided to return my money to society much faster than I was originally planning.”
In absolute cash conditions, this pledge, if honored, will be a very big problem. It will require the institution to maintain a high level of unprecedented annual spending, Probably 9 billion dollars currently per year. This requires thinking about a world where the Gates Foundation is no longer.
But the extent to which the Gates Declaration may encourage important transformations in the broader charitable standards, may be a greater deal. In a simply phrase: billionaires can swear to give more – and perhaps most importantly, to give more faster.
“You can say that this announcement is not at the right time,” Gates mocked to New York Times In an interview accompanied by his announcement. This meant that his new pledge was driven by optimism about the strength of charitable works to significantly improve global health, which sits strangely with the prevailing feeling that progress appears to be eroded.
But I looked at another way, what was more important about the Gates Declaration was not the huge dollar number that got a lot of attention, but embracing the importance of timing in charitable works. Through charity timingI mean, he raised his responsibility for the current moment, contemporary needs, strikes, and opportunities, such as driving motives in giving.
In offering his advertisement, Gates explained that he is putting a portion of money from the door now. He told the Times that “this” is a miracle time, “it ripens with all kinds of possibilities for amazing progress in global health, such as Treating single genes for HIV/AIDS And new tools to prevent mother and childhood deaths, such as portable, Ultrasound that supports AI. Looking at all these opportunities, Gates says: “It makes a big difference to take money and spend it now at a later time.”
This may seem clear. But for many benefactors, the institutions are tools designed as much as the wealth of warehouses to abandon them. Gates is now putting his commercial brand behind the latter, which presses for the current interests that must be matched by wide -ranging charitable contributions.
But it is clear that there is another reason for the current moment. Gates advertisement acknowledged that he is committing additional money at a time when governments around the world, especially in the United States, reduce their own financing for global aid. He has Preserve His insistence that charitable works cannot defend government funding for global health – in 2023, the United States Agency for International Development managed more than 35 billion dollars In the credits, for example-a large-scale giving less confirmation to the superiority of private charitable works more than an urgent argument that the Elon Musk team made a mistake in aid.
“It is not clear whether the richest countries in the world will continue to defend its poorest.” Blog post Explanation of his decision. “But the only thing we can guarantee is that, in all our business, Gates will support efforts to help people and countries out of poverty.”
For this reason, Musk, which he has Pride On the “U.S. Agency for International Development in Qatar Wood”, it has emerged as a kind of enemy at the start of the advertisement. “The image of the richest man in the world kills the poorest children in the world is not a beautiful picture,” Gates commented on Financial times.
It is an unfamiliar general conflict over Gates, who Even recently He planted a public personality avoiding any hint of partisanship. However, his comments evoke one uncomfortable fact: Musk has already signed the bid pledge (In 2012). But Gates took this directly, and thus presented a tacit criticism of the charitable standards system he took. Giving pledge – an unusual side of it [is] He said in an interview with the New York Times.
This is true that through its concept, the bid pledge was to study a timing issue. The scale of success in the pledge was to obtain “this group of billionaires to think early in their lives on how to restore money, whether during their lives or upon their death,” as French Gates Milinda explained during an interview with her Charlie Rose In 2010.
Gates now indicates an invitation to donors to do more than start thinking about giving – and start offering more now. As he explained, he is now pushing the wealthy to increase the size of the tender, but the pace of giving as well.
It is something you have learned gates of example Chuck VinnieThe co -founder of the Tanker Empire for customs duties. Feness gave an unknown amounts for years, as it embraced the general identity only as a huge mankin as a way to spread a gospel. “Giving while living“They are ethics that have been destroyed as” how I think about charitable works. ”
The need for giving while living
There is a large group of reasons that make donors general Creation to get the gift completely properlyTo the desire to keep money to address future problems, to the simple truth that is difficult to give up wealth. On the institutional level, one of the main challenges is the commitment to creativity, which imposes a specific ceiling on the levels of spending so that the endowment is not drained.
Over the past decades of the twentieth century, and the first decade of the new century, eternity has been an implicit backward in the charitable sector. In deliberations on 1969 tax reform lawWhich established the organizational system under which institutions will work in the next half century, Congress It is considered I 40 years later imposed on the foundations. The proposal, which was eventually defended by Al -Senator Al -Gore, was rejected, and in its position, the annual payment requirements were passed by 6 percent (changed after a few years to 5 percent), as part of. ”The big deal“This exchanges some commitment to” charitable timing “for the legitimacy of creativity.
But over the past two decades, the tendency to deal with eternity has eroded the default action. The reasons behind this shift vary from the urgency of the environmental crisis (many Firstly wave From the institutions spent in the twenty -first century, it devoted itself to the issue), to the tendency of young donors who made their wealth relatively quickly to look at it. They spend their charitable resources quickly.
In 2020, my world reconnaissanceRockefeller Filanthropy Advisors found that nearly half of the organizations founded in 2010 were established as limited time vehicles, an increase of about 20 percent in the 1980s. A 2022 Survey I found that “among the respondents that have been created since 2000, nearly a quarter of (23 percent) have been created as limited time, which represents an increase of 22 degrees Celsius.”
In fact, the French Bill and Melinda have never committed Gates, their basis for creativity. Seven years after the establishment of the institution in 2000, they had pledge To close it 50 years after their death. in It happened In 2022, Gates suggested that the institution would last for another 25 years. But the new announcement of the date of 2045 is more specific support for “limited time charities”.
So this may be a pivotal moment for the standards surrounding charitable time. We live during a period determined by successive crises – climate, ethnic justice, and Covid, and now those related to Trump administration budget discounts. In response to all, a handful to Foundation They have a great way more Their spending rates; some committed to Spend under Their origins.
It was also a period of spread High -level A billion dollar charitable pledges of individual donors. This is in time to the extent that they are Attract the attention of the public and the immediate mediaBut they did not necessarily translate into the appropriate time in time for charitable funds. In recent years, McKenzi Scott has largely seized attentionAnd the moment Gates compete as the most prominent public charity in the country, with Speed and urgency That embraced with the challenge of directing the Amazon wealth to charitable works, and with a commitment “Keep it until the safe is empty.” It has given about 19 billion dollars in the past five years, although it has Struggle To keep pace with uncompromising frequency of increasing interest and increasing stock price in Amazon; Her total wealth Since then, it has been crawl.
He took everything in, then, there was no final shift towards giving now in charitable works. Can the Gates announcement help in returning one? If so, Gates will shed light on another variety of discussions within the charitable sector. One of the most important of these matters is a major paradox of contemporary criticism of charitable works, which is summarized in the old joke: “Food here is terrible – and the parts are very small!”
Besides the demands of obtaining more and fastest to give concerns about the ways that Mega-Villanters can distort the criteria and democratic institutions. Gates was not only one of the most famous and celebrated benefactors, but too One of the most criticalOn these conditions exactly.
Whether it is the increase in the giving that will come from the Gates Foundation or not comply with democratic demands – both, for example, it can help transfer power to local societies and institutions – probably important to build the next generation of charitable standards such as those related to the scale and application.
