|
By Richard Williamson Gates Surpasses The Late Greats Of Philanthropy By Richard Williamson Move over, Andrew Carnegie. Step aside, John D. Rockefeller. Bill Gates is the greatest philanthropist in American history. And he's only 44 years old. With one lap remaining in the 20th Century, Gates is miles ahead of his nearest competitor and still gaining speed. In 1999, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded more than $2 billion in grants, including what is believed to be the largest single private grant in United States history -- $750 million to a global vaccine program. The gift actually exceeded a $1 billion commitment to the United Nations from cable mogul Ted Turner in 1997. While Turner's donation was made up of $100 million annually over 10 years, Gates' grant was for a five-year period. "I certainly don't know of one bigger," said Sara Engelhardt, president of the Foundation Center in New York. "You normally don't have foundations giving grants at that level. It's only recently that you've been seeing $1 billion foundations set up." Turner, who said he gave $1 billion to the United Nations because it was "a nice round number," teamed with his fellow billionaire Gates on Dec. 7 with a $78 million grant to support efforts to eradicate polio from the world by the end of this year. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will donate $50 million, and another $28 million will come from the United Nations Foundation established by Turner, founder of Cable News Network, now a unit of Time Warner Inc. Gates and his wife, Melinda French Gates, consolidated the power of their three foundations into one in 1999. The William H. Gates Foundation, headed by Gates' father, and the Gates Learning Foundation were absorbed into the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with more than $17 billion in assets forming the largest of America's more than 44,000 foundations. Great Britain's Wellcome Trust is the only foundation in the world with a richer bank balance at L$12 billion. While Gates has surpassed the Carnegies, Rockefellers and Fords in total dollars given to charity, philanthropic experts say comparisons to givers from the Gilded Age may be unfair. "Yes, it's more money than anyone has ever put into a foundation," Englehardt said. "Is it a larger percentage of his worth? Probably not." One of the things that makes comparisons to the Carnegies and Rockefellers difficult, explained Englehardt, is that they gave before the income tax, and thus tax deductions, was created. "In real dollars, it's more than they gave. Relative to what it can do, it's probably smaller than what the Carnegies' or Rockefellers' money could do." Ellen Lagamenn, a New York University history professor and expert on philanthropy, said comparisons between Gates and the late greats are premature. "I don't think these comparisons at the moment are very accurate or apt because Bill Gates is at the beginning of his philanthropic life," she said. "We have a whole record for Carnegie and Rockefeller. I think the issue is what Bill Gates is doing and how sensibly he is doing it. It seems to me he is heading in the right direction." While benefactors such as Carnegie, Mellon and Rockefeller represented the burgeoning wealth arising from oil, steel and railroads, those of the late 20th Century are bearing gifts from the revolutionary age of information technology. And, like Rockefeller, Gates stands accused of being a monopolist. Gates' $750 million gift to the Global Fund for Children's Vaccines came less than three weeks after United States District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled that Microsoft used its monopoly power to thwart competition. The ruling was seen as a threat to Microsoft stock, but share prices rebounded after Jackson appointed a federal judge to mediate between Microsoft and the U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors. Though Gates has really hit his stride as a philanthropist in the past decade, he comes from a family of well-heeled donors. Gates' father William H. Gates Sr. has served as national board member for the United Way. Gates' mother Mary Gates, who died of breast cancer in 1994, is often seen as the inspiration for her son's philanthropy. Mary Gates was also a leader in the United Way. Gates' previous largest commitment was $1 billion in August to the United Negro College Fund for Gates Millennium scholarships. But that grant will be distributed over 20 years. Since 1998, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given more than $2.5 billion to health-related programs, including $25 million to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, $50 million to the Malaria Vaccine Initiative and more than $100 million to a Seattle-based vaccination program. "Melinda and I are committed to ensuring that every child has access to lifesaving vaccines in the next millennium, regardless of where they live," Gates said in a released statement. The Global Fund for Children's Vaccines is a partnership with the World Bank, the World Health Organization and the Rockefeller Foundation. The money will go to support the efforts for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI). "The goal is to create this global fund," said Gates Foundation spokesman Trevor Neilson. "We're hoping to join together with others, including governments around the world." At a press conference in December, 1998 after a $100 million gift to the Program for Appropriate Technology and Health (PATH) for vaccines, Gates compared the advances in medicine to the computer-based technology where he made his fortune. "The increased understanding of the genome, the rapid creation of new biotechnology products, it's really quite amazing," Gates said. "I think a major challenge of the 21st Century will be to spread the benefits of the new technology as widely as possible. "One of our daughter's first shots was to protect against Hepatitis B," he said. "The only thing standing in the way of saving millions of additional kids' lives in developing countries is ensuring an adequate supply of new vaccine." Melinda Gates said there is a 15-year gap between the use of a vaccine in the developed world and its availability in Third World countries. "That to us is completely inexcusable, especially when you think about some of these new vaccines and the fact that they really, really benefit a lot of the children in the Third World countries more than our own children here at home." The Gates Foundation has become the nation's richest with the soaring value of Microsoft stock. Last February, Bill and Melinda Gates added $2.2 billion in stock to the William H. Gates Foundation as the Hague Forum on population and development convened in the Netherlands. At the same time, they gave $1.1 billion to the Gates Learning Foundation. Four months later, the Gateses doubled the funding of the William H. Gates Foundation with another $5 billion, the largest single gift by living individuals. A strong economy, an increase in the number of foundations and a variety of other factors have contributed to a trend toward ever-larger gifts, Engelhardt said. "Half of all the foundations operating today have been created since 1980," she said. "A much larger proportion of foundations have living donors, and living donors tend to take a personal interest in their foundation giving." Because many foundations are short-staffed, they may find it easier to give a large gift to an intermediary such as GAVI than to parcel smaller donations to a number of organizations, Engelhardt said. The Gates Foundation also reflects the growth of foundations invested in only one stock. Of the top six, only the Ford Foundation has a diversified portfolio. The David and Lucille Packard Foundation, established by Hewlett-Packard's co-founder, ranks second behind Gates. The Packard Foundation donated $75 million this year toward international population and reproductive health programs and last year committed $375 million to environmental programs over five years. Although total giving figures are not yet available for 1999, in 1998 foundation funding for nonprofit organizations climbed 22 percent to a record $19.46 billion, according to the Foundation Center. Since 1996, grants climbed 41 percent or about $5.6 billion and more than doubled since 1990. With little inflation, giving outpaced inflation by 20 percent in 1998.
Richard Williamson is a reporter for the Denver News Bureau.
|
