Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

OVERVIEW: The Gates Foundation funds nonprofit and for-profit organizations in dozens of issue areas, with a large footprint in infant and maternal health, family planning, vaccines and diseases, education, gender equity & financial inclusion, food & agriculture, and global development. Grantmaking is global in scope, with partnerships in over 130 countries.

IP TAKE: The Gates Foundation has long been considered one of the most influential philanthropies in the world. According to a recent analysis by Inside Philanthropy writer Philip Rojc, “in terms of both its scale and its long-cultivated role as a unique arbiter in the realm of global health and development, the Gates Foundation is a kind of lynchpin for the current global philanthropic order.” While the foundation’s sprawling grantmaking spans many issue areas, it is known in particular for deep investments in combating global diseases, gender equity, and economic inclusion and development.

The foundation is transparent about its grantmaking and financials, with a searchable grants database and detailed financial information available at the website. Gates takes a proactive approach to grantmaking, relying on an internal process to identify prospective grantees. However, in cases where the foundation wants to cast a wider net, it issues a request for proposals (RFP). Open RFPs are limited. In general, this is not an accessible funder for new grantees, and the bulk of Gates’ giving consists of large, multi-year commitments to established organizations, including some of the world’s best-known NGOs, universities, and U.N.-affiliated organizations. While smaller organizations with strong track records stand a chance here, they may have to engage in some strenuous networking to get noticed.

PROFILE: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, launched in 2000, was co-founded by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his spouse (now former spouse), Melinda French Gates. The foundation was initially formed as a merger between two pre-existing Gates philanthropies, the William H. Gates Foundation and the Gates Learning Foundation. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.

The foundation’s early focus areas included education in the U.S. and disease eradication globally. Over the years, its global programming has expanded significantly. Today, The Gates Foundation is the largest charitable organization in the United States by far, with an endowment of around $70 billion. The foundation defines itself as a “nonprofit fighting poverty, disease and inequity around the world,” and its mission is to “create a world where every person has the opportunity to live a healthy, productive life.”

The Gates’ are Giving Pledge signatories who have pledged to give away most of their wealth. As Bill Gates’ personal fortune continues to balloon, the foundation’s coffers likewise grow. In 2022, Gates announced that by 2026, the Gates Foundation’s annual grantmaking budget will be $9 billion. Likewise in 2022, Gates pumped another $20 billion into the foundation.

  • Gates conducts grantmaking at both the national and international levels. Its U.S. program centers on education, economic mobility and the state of Washington.

  • Globally, the foundation runs several overlapping initiatives for global development, health and economic & gender equity. Its website currently lists six core program strategies: Agricultural Development; Family Planning; Inclusive Financial Systems; Polio; Water Sanitation and Hygiene; Women in Leadership.

  • Gates has programs in over 130 countries, with “foundation representatives based in key regions.” These general key regions are: Africa, China, India, East Asia, Europe, Middle East, and North America.

  • It is worth mentioning that, as one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the world, this funder’s work exceeds its named programs and initiatives, as it addresses needs and causes across most of the globe through partnerships with governments, research institutions, and NGOs.

Global Program:

Grants for Global Development and Health

The foundation’s global funding encompasses four main giving areas, which include Global Development, Global Growth and Opportunity, Global Health, and Policy and Advocacy. Funding here often intersects with sustainable farming and food, journalism, finance, science and medical research. Learn more about each area of international development below:

  • The Global Development program “focuses on improving the delivery of high-impact health products and services to the world’s poorest communities and helps countries expand access to health coverage.”

    • Emergency Response giving targets “regions affected by natural disasters, disease outbreaks, and complex emergencies” and works broadly to provide aid and improve local capacity for response. Grantees of this subprogram include the United States Fund for UNICEF, the Save the Children Federation and Lutheran World Relief, among many others.

    • Support for Global Health Agencies and Funds helps health organizations around the world stay on track to meet the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals for global health. Key grantee partners here include the WHO, UNICEF and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, among others.

    • Immunization is another main area of focus, with grants working to “reach children, adolescents, and adults in lower-income countries with the vaccines they need to live a life free from vaccine-preventable diseases.” Giving focuses on areas of the world with “the highest rates of unimmunized children” and target preventable diseases including, but not limited to, pneumonia, rotavirus, polio, measles and cholera.

    • A separate subinitiative works to “eradicate polio worldwide.” Support mainly goes to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI).

    • The foundation also makes grants for Primary Health Care, with the goal of “strengthening the quality, accessibility, and efficiency of primary health care systems.” Strategies for this giving include the expansion of existing health infrastructure, program evaluation, testing promising primary health care innovations and expanding health services through partnerships and collaborations.

  • Gates’ Global Growth and Opportunity giving area “focuses on creating and scaling market-based innovations to stimulate inclusive and sustainable economic growth.”

    • A core focus area is Agricultural Development. Giving focuses on sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where grants support “farmers and governments […] seeking a sustainable, inclusive agricultural transformation.” Specific areas of investment include “tools and technologies” for farmers, innovative income supports for smallholder producers of food and “efforts to develop more effective systems for delivering products and services to smallholder farmers.”

    • Overlapping with its agricultural giving, Gates prioritizes Nutrition and helping more than one billion people around the world gain “access to the nutrition and healthy diets they need to survive and thrive.” Strategies for this grantmaking include food fortification, sustainable food production and distribution systems, and nutrition interventions for mothers, infants and young children.

    • The subprogram for Inclusive Financial Systems works to “expand access to digital financial services” to people living in the world’s poorest countries. Priorities of this program include support for the development and adoption of digital finance infrastructures, the establishment of regulatory systems for digital platforms and the inclusion and empowerment of women.

    • The foundation also invests in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in areas of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia that have lagged behind in the development of sewer systems and safe sanitation. This program emphasizes innovation and, in 2011, it launched a Reinvent the Toilet Challenge that resulted in systems that are now commercially available. Grants and investments have also gone to public and private organizations working to expand inclusive indoor plumbing and public sewer systems in urban and rural areas.

    • Grants for Global Education mainly support initiatives working “[t]o improve basic literacy and numeracy skills among children of primary school age in sub-Saharan Africa and India.” Strategies include data collection and analysis, policy development and advocacy, teacher development, curricular solutions and capacity building for effective education systems and providers.

  • The Global Health giving area appears to be the foundation’s largest and most comprehensive program. This far-reaching initiative “aims to reduce inequities in health by developing new tools and strategies to reduce the burden of infectious disease and the leading causes of child mortality in developing countries.”

    • Grants for Discovery & Translational Sciences work to “[t]o catalyze innovation for the discovery and translation of transformational solutions to global health inequity.” Grantmaking targets “potentially transformative products” including those “with a high risk of failure but also the potential to create truly disruptive change.”

      In addition to supporting leading researchers and institutes around the world, the foundation bankrolls the Global Health Discovery Collaboratory and the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute.

    • The Gates Foundation runs significant subprograms for the prevention, treatment and eradication of specific diseases. These include HIV, Malaria, Neglected Tropical Diseases, Pneumonia and Tuberculosis.

    • A separate and significant subprogram is devoted to Vaccine Development and Surveillance.

    • Notably, it was the Gates Foundation that provided seed funding for The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in 2002. Since its founding, this massive international financing partnership has dispersed $60 billon to fight these diseases. The Gates Foundation has continued to support this work in myriad ways.

    • A subprogram for Innovative Technology Solutions aims to “identify emerging technologies that have potentially transformative applications for global health.”

      • Grants here are mainly “targeted, short-term investments” that work to validate and explore the viability of new technologies that have the potential to address major global health issues.

      • Areas of interest include but are not limited to DNA encoding for disease protection, the development of innovative supplements and nutrition fortifications, health care automation and low-cost rapid diagnostics.

    • Similarly, the Integrated Development subprogram “accelerate[s] the development, regulatory approval, and manufacturing of innovative products and enabling platforms that advance global health.” A significant portion of this work focuses on drug development and reducing the amount of time involved in bringing effective and affordable treatments to “the people who need them most.” Areas of focus have included regulatory systems, manufacturing, quality controls and “[c]ontraceptive technology research and development.”

    • Gates’ Institute for Disease Modeling works broadly to improve global health and eradicate diseases “by developing, using, and sharing computational modeling tools and promoting quantitative decision-making.” Strategies for this work include data modeling, statistical analysis and deep collaboration with the global health research community.

  • A separate global development initiative focuses on Policy and Advocacy “to build strategic relationships” that will help the foundation reach its global health and development goals.

    • A subinitiative for Development Policy and Finance works to “harness the power of finance and economics to address poverty and inequality.” In addition to grantmaking in this area, the initiative engages in “analytic and advisory services” and develops partnerships and collaborations with key players both internationally and for individual countries of interest.

    • The Gates Foundation’s Global Media Partnerships program supports an array of public interest media outlets and initiatives with the goal of ensuring “reliable, consistent reporting on critical global health and development issues that disproportionally affect the world’s poorest people.” Grants prioritize sub-Saharan Africa, the U.S., Europe and Japan. Grantees of this program are required to demonstrate journalistic professionalism in “providing fact-based information and committing to the pursuit of truth” and maintaining “creative and editorial independence.”

      Media grantees include NPR’s Goats and Soda blog, Kenya’s Daily Nation, the Associated Press, The Guardian and the International Center for Journalists.

    • A subprogram for Philanthropic Partnerships works to “inspire and enable more informed and intentional generosity by all.” Specifically, the foundation supports “research, innovation, collaboration, and knowledge sharing” amongst philanthropic organizations around the world.

    • The Gates Foundation also works globally in the area of Tobacco Control, aiming to “reduce tobacco-related death and disease in low- and middle-income countries by preventing the initiation of new smokers, decreasing overall tobacco use, and reducing exposure to secondhand smoke.” Key strategies include “policy intervention” and “social marketing” to increase knowledge and awareness about the dangers of tobacco use.

Grants for Women and Girls

The Gates Foundation’s Gender Equality initiative “works to ensure women and girls in Africa and South Asia can enjoy good health, make their own choices, earn their own money, and be leaders in their societies.” Grantmaking for women and girls overlaps with some of the foundation’s other global grantmaking goals and priorities, particularly in areas related to health and economic development.

This is a major portfolio within the foundation. In 2021, the Gates Foundation pledged to commit $2.1 billion to gender equality through 2026. The foundation names the following ten priority areas for its giving.

  • Grants for Adolescents & Social Norms focus on data collection, multimedia platforms and local leadership that “enable adolescent girls and young women to have the agency to make decisions about their health, education, and economic opportunities in a supportive environment.”

  • Digital Connectivity Grants work to “reduce the gender gap in digital connectivity so women and girls can more fully participate and thrive in the economy of today and tomorrow.” Giving will target “action-oriented research and innovation and the development and testing of tools and platforms.”

  • Family Planning grants aim to “empower women and girls to take charge of their own reproductive health, enable them to make informed decisions about family planning, and ensure their access to contraceptive options that meet their needs.” The foundation has committed $300 million per year through 2030 in this area, with funding focusing on contraceptive access, quality family planning services, advocacy, research and collaboration with governments including India, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya and Pakistan.

  • The goal of the Gender Data and Insights subprogram is to “collect and analyze better data to ensure that women are counted and considered in decisions that affect their lives and livelihoods.” The foundation’s work in this are includes support for “internal foundation teams and external partners” and focuses on inclusive and gender-equitable data collection and analysis to inform policy makers, governments and others.

  • Gender Integration refers to the foundation’s ongoing efforts to apply “an intersectional gender lens across global programs.” This work is mainly internal to the foundation and consists largely of “capacity building, consultation, and technical assistance to help foundation staff assess and address gender-related implications in all investments, strategies, and key internal operations.”

  • Maternal, Infant & Child Health is a large program working to “ensure that women and their newborns remain healthy before, during, and after childbirth, including by supporting the development, testing, and scale up of innovative solutions to address underlying vulnerabilities that contribute to poor health.” In 2023, the foundation committed $370 million to the program through 2027.

  • A related giving area, Maternal, Newborn & Child Health Discovery & Tools, focuses specifically on detecting and addressing “underlying biological vulnerabilities” to maternal and newborn health, including, but not limited to, malnutrition and other risks of preterm birth. This focus area is considered to be “critical to improving the resilience of pregnant women and babies.” Grants have focused on “drugs; food and microbes; and risk stratification, algorithms, and devices.”

  • The Women in Leadership program seeks to expand “women’s full and effective participation in leadership at all levels of decision-making in economic and public life.” The program focuses on “mid-career women” in the fields of health, law and economics, and strategies include the empowerment of individuals, “organizational change” and “societal impact.”

  • A related area of interest is Women’s Economic Empowerment. This program makes grants to “increase women’s economic opportunities by supporting efforts to help them generate and control their own incomes.” Focusing on sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the foundation has set a goal of “generating opportunities for at least 80 million low-income women […] that increase their incomes by more than 30% by 2030.”

  • The final subprogram of Gates’ Gender Equality initiative concerns Women’s Health Innovations. The goal of this giving area is to “facilitate the development of innovative health products and widen the innovation ecosystem to address conditions that disproportionately affect the lives of women in low- and middle-income countries.”

U.S. Program:

Grants for Education 

Grantmaking for education in the U.S. stems from several subprograms and spans early childhood, K-12 and post-secondary education.

  • A subprogram for educational Data aims to “ensure that educators, families, and policymakers across the United States have the information they need to help students succeed in school and in life.”

    • Grants support “efforts to collect and expand access to student data” with an eye to security and privacy.

    • The program also currently supports the development of comprehensive data systems at the state level to “serve as exemplars for other states” and to help educational researchers and curriculum designers create and improve evidence-based teaching methods.

  • Early Learning Solutions is the subprogram for early childhood education. Grantmaking here works nationally to improve “access to high-quality, affordable, personalized early learning opportunities.”

    • Overlapping with the data subprogram, grants for early learning have supported efforts to “measure the quality of learning environments” and collect data that will “accurately inform early childhood policies.”

    • A significant portion of funding here also supports “pre-K professional development, mentoring, and coaching.”

  • The K-12 Education subprogram works to improve K-12 learning with a strong focus on mathematics as “the cornerstone skill for academic success and greater opportunities in the workforce.”

    • Specifically areas of interest include the improvement of instructional materials, methods and teacher preparation.

    • The foundation prioritizes equity in this work, noting that Black, Latino and low-income students too often “experience math as a barrier to success rather than as a gateway.”

  • Pathways is the Gates Foundation’s college and career readiness program. Grantmaking works to support students “in their transition from high school to college, career, and beyond,” with a strong focus on “Black and Latino students and students experiencing poverty.” In addition to student supports, the program works to forge better connections between high school curricula, college expectations and viable career skills.

  • The Post-Secondary Success giving area aims to “dramatically improve student outcomes and ensure that race, ethnicity, and income are not predictors of postsecondary success.” A main thrust of the program is collaborating with colleges, universities, policymakers and others to provide both support and institutional innovation to “help students identify and get on a path to a certificate or degree, stay on that path, and ensure that they are learning along the way.”

  • Finally, the Gates Foundation runs a separate initiative for Washington State, where it “help[s] more students […] enroll in a postsecondary program after high school.” A multi-year commitment of $75 million supports “schools, colleges and community organizations” that share the foundation’s goal of increasing students pursuing higher education.

The Gates Foundation’s U.S. education grantees include Rice University, Unbounded Learning, the Fund for Public Schools, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Learning, Inc., “a leading provider of K-12 education technology, curriculum, and professional learning solutions.”

Grants for Economic Development and Opportunity

The Gates Foundation’s U.S. program for Economic Mobility and Opportunity aims to “help the U.S. economic system better meet the needs of those experiencing poverty and significantly increase their opportunities to achieve economic success.” The program focuses on “the 47 million people in the U.S. ages 16 to 64 whose annual incomes are below 200% of the federal poverty level” and collaborates with multiple stakeholders to create conditions in which low-income people can “achieve long-term economic stability.”

To these ends, the Gates Foundation collaborated with the Urban Institute and others in the creation of Workrise, “a national platform that funds research and data collection on the labor market and shares promising insights, practices, and policies that can help increase economic opportunity for low-income workers.” Other grantees in the areas of work and opportunity include Washington’s Opportunity at Work, Worklife Patnership, Innovations for Poverty Action and Code for America Labs, which helps state and local governments support low-income residents connection to public services and resources.

Important Grant Details:

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grants start at $5,000 and go up to $100 million or higher, in some cases. Most grants are awarded in amounts of $100,000 or greater.

  • Gates grantmaking is prolific and far surpasses the issues and areas articulated on its website.

  • Gates tends to make large, multi-year commitments to large NGOs, government agencies, education and research institutions, and U.N.-and WHO-affiliated organizations. However, smaller organizations with strong track records do stand a chance here.

  • This funder does not generally accept proposals for funding, but it does occasionally post RFPs for specific projects, often concerning data collection, analysis and program evaluations.

  • Additional information about Gates’s grantmaking is available at its How We Work page and its searchable Committed Grants database.

  • Program pages feature profiles of team members and leadership, making it possible to network with relevant staff.

Submit general inquiries to the Gates Foundation via its contact page.

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