Melinda French Gates has expressed strong support for the Gates Foundation‘s unprecedented plan to spend its entire $200 billion endowment on global health initiatives before closing its doors in 2045, calling the decision “fantastic.”“The vast majority of those resources were to go back to society,” Melinda French Gates told Fortune in a recent interview, reflecting on the foundation’s original intent.The foundation announced it will double its spending to $200 billion over the next two decades to fight deadly diseases, reduce maternal and child deaths, and ease poverty worldwide.
It was “Bill’s decision to make,” says Gates’ ex-wife Melinda French Gates
Melinda French Gates, who left the foundation last year to focus on her own organisation, Pivotal Ventures, said the former couple had always intended to spend down their resources. “Ultimately, though, the timeline was Bill’s decision to make with the board of trustees,” she wrote in responses to AP’s questions about the foundation’s 25th anniversary.
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The Gates Foundation has already spent $100 billion in its first 25 years, with French Gates playing a pivotal role in that work since its founding in 2000. “It’s kind of unbelievable to think about the progress that has been made,” she reflected to Fortune in February from her offices in Kirkland, Washington.Melinda French Gates believes billionaires have a moral obligation to give back. “If you’re a billionaire in the United States, you benefited from this country. You benefited from good roads. You probably benefited somewhere along the way from the health sector,” she told Fortune. “People in other places don’t have those things, and so yes, we owe something back to society.”Despite her departure from the Gates foundation, Melinda French Gates remains committed to its original mission. “To me, the greatest measure of success would be if long after the foundation closed, someone, somewhere, was living a life that looked different because we existed,” she wrote to AP.
