That’s the question posed by foundation CEO Mark Suzman in his annual letter released Tuesday outlining the organization’s priorities and announcing its budget for next year. With $8.3 billion to give by 2023, the Gates Foundation is the largest private philanthropic donor. And with an endowment of more than $70 billion, that spending power will continue for decades.
When asked in an interview with The Associated Press what he thought the answer to that question was, Suzman said, “No.”
He said the Seattle-based foundation takes direction from the Sustainable Development Goals, set by the United Nations and member states in 2015, and understands that with great resources come great responsibilities.
“We try to use our tools, our skills, our resources, sometimes our technical skills, sometimes our voices in advocacy to help move forward and move forward,” Suzman said.
Others disagree, including researchers who follow foundation funding for education in the US, its weight in international global health organizations and its approach to agriculture for small farmers around the world. The foundation works on a wide range of issues and employs 1,700 staff members, who are experts in the area, and supports a great ethos of setting ambitious targets.
Bill Gates, in his latest public letter in December, described the foundation’s mission as reducing inequality and helping “people in poor countries who shouldn’t die, don’t die. Especially children.” Suzman said the mission is to help “ensure that everyone has the opportunity to live a healthy and productive life.”
It has spent billions of dollars on polio vaccines, treating and preventing malaria and HIV and more recently vaccinations for diseases like cholera and advocating for other donors, including countries, to participate in this global public health effort.
But some of these interventions have failed to achieve their goals, despite their widespread adoption.
In one example, the foundation championed the theory of measuring teacher effectiveness in US schools. Then, research was commissioned in 2018 that found that approach did not consistently improve student learning outcomes. It also advocates a curriculum standard called the Common Core that has been criticized as too formulaic and is still applied in some countries.
The foundation announced in October a new education initiative funded by $1.1 billion over four years to try to improve math scores through developing new curriculum and digital tools. For Alex Molnar, of the National Education Policy Center, the plan shows the power of billionaires like Bill Gates – experimenting with the education of the poorest children, despite past mistakes.
“It’s so misguided and so clearly wrong, in a moral sense and in a rational sense, that it’s really heartbreaking,” Molnar said. “These very rich and narrow-minded people can continue to torture school children, but continue to pretend that they are making the world a better place.”
The foundation, Suzman said, approaches educational work with humility and will develop the curriculum in partnership with teachers, students and schools. It does not impose an idea from the top down, he said.
When asked about previous criticism that educational work has ignored the problems that arise from poverty and painful learning, Suzman said that he does not see the role of philanthropy. They say they need to support government or business programs that they can’t or won’t fund.
“If we have good tools to overcome poverty, we will overcome it,” he said from the foundation.
Molnar disagreed, saying that reducing the number of people in poverty means preventing the wealthiest from amassing their fortunes in the first place.
“You need to take money from people like Mr. Gates – taxing the bejesus out of them,” he said. “No one has a lot of money. No one should have a lot of influence.
The Gates Foundation has recently taken steps to decentralize decision-making. In the past two years, he expanded the top leadership, appointing five new members to the board of trustees, with 2023 marking the first time the larger board approves the foundation’s budget.
New members have pushed the foundation to be more transparent, Suzman said. The council also recommended that the foundation set aside some of the $20 billion that Bill Gates provided to the organization in 2022 for future work and gradually increase the annual budget to $9 billion in 2026.
That the new board members have deep experience in philanthropy “is a recognition that gives money away as well as a sophisticated company and something that takes experience and learning and expertise,” said Kathleen Enright, who leads the Board of Foundations.
Bill Gates has reiterated that all his wealth will eventually go to the foundation, which will close 20 years after he, Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett all died. Buffett has entrusted the foundation with $36 billion of his fortune.
“Luckily it wasn’t a burning platform,” Suzman said.
In 2021, when Melinda French Gates and Bill Gates announced their divorce, they said they would evaluate their participation in the foundation after two years. He remains committed to the foundation’s work, Suzman said, when asked.
In 2021, in the first report on the inclusivity and equity of its work, the foundation learned many grantees and partners wanted to consult more and give input to the foundation’s strategy.
Suzman said that every team at the foundation now has a mandate to expand their relationships with partners and that their entire leadership team is participating in a year-long inclusion training.
“Ultimately, money can buy anything for short-term success,” Suzman said. “But long-term sustainability requires ongoing local ownership and direction and ultimately resources.”
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