Bill and Melinda Gates to Spend All Within 50 Years of Their Death

The Gates Foundation focuses on problems of our century

This month, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced that within fifty years of the death of the Gates, it would spend all of its assets. The goal for the foundation is to spend the assets in this century improving the foundations and addressing problems in preparation for the next century. The Foundation said this century would be an important focus to address such things as poverty, AIDS and other situations and issues.

Bill Gates earlier this year announced his inevitable step-down from his day to day role at Microsoft to focus more on the Gates Foundation. While many industry insiders were surprised by the announcement, Bill has been increasing his donations over the years leading up to this point. "Global development is a gigantic problem," said Gates at a philanthropy meeting in New York.

In June of this year, Warren Buffet announced that $44-billion of his total wealth will be given to the Gates Foundation. The large gift will be dispersed in phases and not all at once. Gates mentioned previously that he too will be using much of his wealth for philanthropic causes.

Because Bill and Melinda have decided to focus the foundation’s work in the 21st century, we will be spending all of our resources within 50 years after Bill's, Melinda's, and Warren's deaths. The decision to focus all of our resources in this century underscores our optimism for making huge progress and for making sure that we do as much as possible, as soon as possible, on the comparatively narrow set of issues we’ve chosen to focus on.

The foundation will also be split into two, one part handling the assets and the other part doing the actual programs and work. Bill and Melinda as well as Warren Buffet will serve as trustees for the program foundation. Only Bill and Melinda will be the trustees for the asset foundation. Buffet stated that he does not want to be involved with the money or how it is spent.