September 6, 2010 | Read Time: 3 minutes
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation plans to hold its giving steady at roughly $3-billion this year, with new commitments to polio to be announced this fall, according to its chief executive, Jeffrey S. Raikes.
In his annual “state of the union”-style report released this week and in an interview with The Chronicle, Mr. Raikes discussed the foundation’s key next steps to meet its mission and to improve its communications with grantees following sharp criticism in a survey this summer.
The Gates fund’s giving will probably remain unchanged for now. After losing about 23 percent of its value in 2008, the foundation’s endowment recovered somewhat, from $29-billion to $33-billion last year.
Mr. Raikes said the foundation has been distributing nearly 7 percent of its assets, above the legally required 5 percent a year, but that it will gradually scale back to roughly 5 percent as its endowment recovers.
‘Sobering’ Findings
Mr. Raikes—a former Microsoft employee who celebrates his two-year anniversary as president of the Gates foundation this month—has gotten some kudos for discussing whathe calls the “sobering” findings of an anonymous survey of grantees, conducted by the Center for Effective Philanthropy, that the foundation released in June.
Likening the survey results to customer surveys he found useful while at Microsoft, Mr. Raikes said that the foundation has taken some initial steps to smooth relations, such as ensuring that all of Gates’s nonprofit grantees know who their program officer is and creating “orientation kits” for new grant recipients.
Turnover at the foundation was frequently cited by grantees in the survey as a problem. Mr. Raikes says the challenge at Gates hasn’t been people leaving the foundation for other employers—he says that rate is consistent with other organizations—but the huge growth Gates has gone through in recent years.
The foundation has tripled in size in the past three years, so new hires have been assigned to grantees with high frequency.
In the future, Mr. Raikes said, “We won’t be growing at quite the same percentage.” He added, “We’re much more attuned to the stress that this can put on our connection to grantees, and we’ll be able to handle it that much better.”
Eradicating Polio
In his letter, Mr. Raikes highlights polio, whose eradication he says is achievable but has been thrust into question in part because of decreases in government spending as a result of the global economic crisis.
The Gates fund plans to step up its giving to polio over the next several years through the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a project involving nonprofit groups and donors including the World Health Organization, although the foundation won’t be announcing until the fall exactly how much more it will spend. (Last year, the Gates fund gave $253-million toward eradicating polio.)
Foundation leaders will be increasingly speaking out about the importance of wiping out the disease, Mr. Raikes said.
“If we backslide now, the challenge of then trying to go back later and undertake eradication may just be too great,” he said.
