The question Bill and Melinda Gates received most about their foundation during the past year is whether the Trump administration has put their philanthropic work at risk. In their annual letter, they answered strongly in the affirmative, as they vented about the president’s “America First” foreign policy and personal deportment.
The letter also suggests that the foundation, which has been criticized for focusing much of its work overseas, may delve deeper into domestic anti-poverty programs in the years ahead.
The missive provides a view into the motivations and mechanics behind the Gateses’ prolific giving. Co-founders of the Giving Pledge, a group of more than 174 billionaires who have committed to giving the majority of their wealth away during their lifetimes, the Gateses topped this year’s Philanthropy 50 list of top donors with the $4.8 billion in Microsoft stock they gave to their foundation.
Written in the form of answers to 10 “tough” questions they receive about the foundation, the couple’s 10th annual letter slammed Trump’s push to cut foreign aid, the major focus of the $40 billion philanthropic giant, and counterpunched against the president’s “America First” foreign policy.
They also pushed the Trump White House and it’s GOP congressional allies to generously support and simplify college student-aid programs.
Trump and Women
Melinda Gates, who has made women’s health and empowerment a top priority, criticized Trump’s attitude toward women and his tweeting habits.
“One of the duties of the president of the United States is to role model American values in the world,” she wrote. “I wish our president would treat people, especially women, with more respect when he speaks and tweets.”
She added, “The president has a responsibility to set a good example and empower all Americans through his statements and policies.”
Despite their complaints, Bill Gates wrote that it’s essential to maintain a dialogue with the administration, to try to influence federal policy to the greatest extent possible.
“Although we disagree with this administration more than the others we’ve met with, we believe it’s still important to work together whenever possible,” he wrote. “We keep talking to them because if the U.S. cuts back on its investment abroad, people in other countries will die and Americans will be worse off.”
The couple’s critique of Trump’s policies and behavior mirrors statements from other foundation leaders who have felt their priorities squeezed by the Trump administration.
Setting Priorities
In response to the question “Why don’t you give more in the United States?” Melinda says: “We don’t compare different people’s suffering. All suffering is a terrible tragedy,” before explaining that Gates grants in the developing world can have a greater impact.
Bill Gates follows up by signaling that the foundation may delve deeper into funding domestic anti-poverty programs. In 2016, the grant maker supported the U.S. Partnership on Mobility From Poverty, which last month produced a set of recommended approaches.
The issue has evidently been on the couple’s minds — in the letter, Bill Gates recounts the harsh stories he heard from a single mother who had been evicted from her apartment and from residents of a dilapidated housing complex in Atlanta — but they have not settled on a strategy.
Criticism of Megadonors
The letter also takes on critics who have complained that megadonors like the Gateses exert too much influence over policy with little public input or accountability.
For instance, in a draft chapter of his book Just Giving, Stanford professor Rob Reich writes that the wealth of the Gates Foundation, coupled with money in a separate trust, was $65 billion in 2013, larger than the gross domestic product of most African nations. The sheer heft of big foundations like Gates give them plutocratic power, potentially unresponsive to democratic voices, he writes. “Suppose a group of people disapprove of what the Gates Foundation, or any other foundation, is doing. What then?” he asks. “There’s no mechanism to un-elect Bill and Melinda Gates.”
The couple assert their optimism that the foundation is making the world a better place and attempt to calm fears about its influence, telling readers of the questions in the letter that they will try to “answer them as forthrightly as we can, and we hope that when you’re finished reading them, you’ll be just as optimistic as we are.”
The couple then sets out to defend their approach, answering self-posed questions about their education funding, partnerships they’ve forged with corporations, and how they work out disagreements. (While they sometimes disagree on tactics, Bill Gates says they agree on big issues.)
One question goes directly to the heart of some of the broad critiques of the role of philanthropy in a democracy: Is it fair that you have so much influence?
“No,” responds Melinda Gates. “It’s not fair that we have so much wealth when billions of others have so little. And it’s not fair that our wealth opens doors that are closed to most people.”
But the couple says they have always tried to encourage feedback about the foundation’s work. A foundation’s role, they argue, is to take risks that governments and corporations can’t.
“Although we’ve had some success,” she says, “I think it would be hard to argue at this point that we made the world focus too much on health, education, or poverty.”
Note: Join a conversation between Lin-Manuel Miranda and Bill and Melinda Gates — either at Hunter College in Manhattan or on Facebook Live — on Tuesday, February 13, from noon to 1:30. The wide-ranging Q&A will explore the Gateses’ 10th Annual Letter and why they are optimistic about the state of the world. The Gateses and Miranda will take questions about philanthropy, global health, education, and current events from the student audience and Facebook Live viewers around the world.
