Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, who is presently ranked fifth on Forbes’ list of the world’s billionaires, recently made a significant announcement regarding the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a non-profit organization he founded with his ex-wife nearly 20 years ago. He has declared that in the future, “apart from what I spend on myself and my family, I will contribute all my fortune to the foundation.”
“Giving this money is not at anyway a sacrifice from my end. I appreciate the opportunity to work on such monumental problems, and I feel obligated to give back to society in ways that will most significantly enhance people’s quality of life. Bill Gates wrote on his blog, “I hope others in positions of tremendous wealth and power would step up in this moment as well.
“The Gates Foundation wants to boost investment from approximately $6 billion per year prior to COVID to $9 billion per year by 2026 with the backing and direction of our board. Our priorities will not change, but during this time of great need and opportunity, additional funding will enable us to advance more quickly by making deeper investments in the areas where we are already working. I am contributing $ 20 billion to the foundation’s endowment this month to help make this expenditure increase possible,” the 66-year-old Microsoft founder stated in a post where he listed the Ukraine war and Covid among the top challenges the globe is now facing.
According to data from Forbes, the tech millionaire currently has a net worth of $103 billion.
He also emphasized that American business tycoon Warren Buffet had a crucial role in the expansion of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in his most recent round of revelations. There is one little-known but crucial factor that has allowed the foundation to be so ambitious. Despite the fact that it is called the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, over half of its funding to this point has come from Warren Buffett’s donations, Gates revealed.
He claimed that since 2006, Warren “had donated $35.7 billion to the foundation, including his most recent gift of $3.1 billion in June.” The post continued, “If you take into account the rise of the Berkshire Hathaway shares after it was granted, the actual worth of these gifts is around $45 billion.”
As a nonprofit organization dedicated to “fighting poverty, sickness, and unfairness around the world,” the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation describes itself as such. It asserts to have invested $2 billion in the worldwide war since 2020.
