The founder of Microsoft, the internationally acclaimed company, is not going to stop where he’s now trying to improve and modernize his brainchild. Apart from the commercial element of his life, Bill Gates appears to be quite focused on charity. So, in conjunction with his spouse, Melinda, the American billionaire is going soon to build his second empire - of charity this time. It is expected to become the world’s largest organization of the kind. It is known so far that Bill Gates has assigned about one billion US dollars to carry out some charitable projects in India.
According to data posted on the site of the Gates Foundation, its assets are worth 34.6 bn. dollars, including 8 billion dollars donated as charity by another famous American billionaire, Warren Buffett.
Structurally, the Foundation employs 870 staff in over a hundred countries of the world. According to foreign media, currently the Foundation is having a building for its headquarters built in Seattle. This project’s worth is estimated at 350 million dollars.
Interestingly, the worth of the Foundation’s assets as at the end of September this year grew by 24% over the past three months to 14.6 billion dollars. In this respect, almost all investments Mr. Gates made in stocks of major companies both were justified and generated significant profits of an average 4%.
Last week this Foundation hosted a forum in Seattle. Its main subject was encouragement of saving. According to the Foundation’s representatives savings accounts give people great opportunities to ‘successfully’ finance their business and manage a variety of risks. As a result, their careers and businesses prosper and the quality of life grows. However, as estimated by the Foundation, only 10% of the total number (2.5 billion) of poor people can use various financial instruments, including savings accounts.
In this connection the Foundation’s representatives claimed they were prepared to donate an amount of 500 million dollars to develop savings projects, including in such countries and Bangladesh and Tanzania. These innovations of the Foundation essentially mean involving as many cell phone users as possible in operations with small amounts through mobile banking systems, i.e. making transactions by using cell phones. For example, they could use M-PESA which proved itself among Kenyan users – over 4 million people.
The Gates intend to use the same tools that Bill Gates applied in the past to create Microsoft – money injections and technologies – to ensure involvement of poor categories of the population in savings projects. Bill and Melinda are prepared to cooperate not only with governmental and non-profit organizations, but also with corporate private clients. Vodacom (Tanzanina), a regional division of a telecom, Vodafone, is one of such business partners of the Foundation.
However, given such methods of operation, as The Financial Times puts it, the Gates Foundation looks more like a venture fund. In particular, like venture funds, the new brainchild of Microsoft’s founder invests for a few small organizations that meet routine objectives through experiment, for example, by creating a model characterized by high risks but offering potentially high profits as a reward. It is this system, according to the publication, that drew Warren Buffett’s attention to the Foundation.
Jeff Raikes, CEO of the Foundation, said that the total of 3 billion US dollars was credited last year to the Foundation’s account as donations which amount to 23 billion dollars since the Foundation was set up. According to him, the Foundation’s main objective is to cooperate with other organizations and create new ideas and concepts which are further implemented and help solve the most global and complex international problems, for example, multi-billion investments in vaccines recently made by the Foundation. Raikes believes this is the best financial project aimed at saving lives.
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