Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and the Future of Huge Foundations(?)
And so is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, albeit for unrelated reasons. There’s no indication that Mr. Gates couldn’t be alone with interns at the Foundation (in fact, there may not even be interns at the Foundation), but the Foundation may be facing an existential crisis: Warren Buffet and his heirs have made clear that after his death, none of Buffet’s assets will go to the Gates Foundation. This pulling back isn’t, apparently, related to the misdeeds of Bill Gates. Instead, reportedly, Mr. Buffet objects to the inefficiencies and bloat in the Gates Foundation.
But this is bad for the Gates Foundation, for a couple reasons. One is, Buffet was likely the largest donor to the Gates Foundation–his donations (roughly $39 billion) at least matched the donations by Bill and Melinda French Gates; some years, the Gates donated less than half a billion dollars. (That is, I realize, a crazy sentence–as charitable as I want to be, over my lifetime I will never half half a billion dollars to donate, much less in a single year!)
A second: the Foundation seems to have believed that it would, in fact, continue to get a portion of Buffet’s fortune after he died. Which means it will likely have to reevaluate its goals and promises over the coming years.
So is there downside to relying on charitable organizations to solve societal problems? At the very least, this suggests one: at least some portion of philanthropy is based on interpersonal relationships. And when those interpersonal relationships begin to fray, so too can the funding that they make possible.
Samuel D. Brunson