Bill Gates donates $27.9b to his foundation
Bill Gates, co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, attends a news conference at the World Economic Forum 2022 (WEF) in the Alpine resort of Davos, Switzerland May 25, 2022.
PHOTO: Reuters
PUBLISHED ONJuly 14, 2022 2:31 AM
Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates is donating US$20 billion (S$27.9 billion) to the charitable foundation run by him and his ex-wife Melinda French Gates to boost its annual distributions.
The donation will help the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation - one of the world's largest private charitable foundations - increase its annual payout by 50per cent to $9 billion by 2026, he said in a post on his personal blog on Wednesday (July 13).
"The great crises of our time require all of us to do more," Gates said, referring to the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and climate change, among others.
He added that the compounding effects of crises, which include surging inflation, had increased the need to invest more in the foundation's core focus areas of health, education, gender equality and poverty alleviation.
The donation brings the 22-year-old organisation's endowment to about US$70 billion, which includes a grant of US$3.1 billion from Warren Buffett last month.
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