Tổ chức này được kiểm soát bởi ba người được ủy thác là Bill và Melinda Gates, và Warren Buffett.[4] Giám đốc điều hành của tổ chức là Mark Suzman. Tháng 10 năm 2006, quỹ có hỗ trợ vốn vào khoảng 31.9 tỷ USD. Tính đến ngày 31 tháng 12 năm 2018, quỹ có nguồn vốn lên tới 46.8 tỷ USD.[2] Tính đến năm 2018, Bill và Melinda Gates đã quyên góp khoảng 36 tỷ USD cho quỹ.[5][6] Kể từ khi thành lập, quỹ đã quyên góp và hỗ trợ một loạt các dự án phát triểnxã hội, y tế và giáo dục, bao gồm cả việc thành lập Học bổng Gates Cambridge tại Đại học Cambridge.
To maintain its status as a charitable foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation must donate funds equal to at least 5 percent of its assets each year.[7] As of April 2014, the foundation is organized into four program areas under chief executive officer Susan Desmond-Hellmann, who "sets strategic priorities, monitors results, and facilitates relationships with key partners":[8]
The foundation maintains an online database of grants.[10]
Open access policy
In November 2014, the Gates Foundation announced that they were adopting an open access (OA) policy for publications and data, "to enable the unrestricted access and reuse of all peer-reviewed published research funded by the foundation, including any underlying data sets".[11] This move has been widely applauded by those who are working in the area of capacity building and knowledge sharing.[cần dẫn nguồn] Its terms have been called the most stringent among similar OA policies.[12] As of ngày 1 tháng 1 năm 2015 their Open Access policy is effective for all new agreements.[13] In March 2017, it was confirmed that the open access policy, Gates Open Research,[14] would be based on the same initiative launched in 2016 by Wellcome Trust in their Wellcome Open Research policy[15] launched in partnership with F1000 Research.[16][17]
The Gates Foundation supported Our World in Data, one of the world's largest open-access publications.[18] Bill Gates called the publication his "favorite website".[19]
Our World in Data is a scientific online publication, based at the University of Oxford, that studies how to make progress against large global problems such as poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, and inequality.[20] The mission of Our World in Data is to present "research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems".[21]
Funds for grants in developing countries
The following table lists the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's committed funding as recorded in their International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) publications. The Gates Foundation announced in October 2013 that it would join the IATI.[22] The IATI publications only include a subset of Gates Foundation grants (mainly excluding grants to developed countries), and contain few grants before 2009 (which are excluded from the table).[23] The Gates Foundation states on the IATI Registry site that "reporting starts from 2009 and excludes grants related to our US programs and grants that if published could harm our employees, grantees, partners, or the beneficiaries of our work".[24]
The following table lists the top receiving organizations to which the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed funding, between 2009 and 2015. The table again only includes grants recorded in the Gates Foundation's IATI publications.[23]
^“Foundation FAQ”. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (bằng tiếng Anh). From 1994 through 2018, Bill and Melinda gave the foundation more than $36.0 billion.
^“Bill Gates”. Forbes (bằng tiếng Anh). To date, Gates has donated $35.8 billion worth of Microsoft stock to the Gates Foundation.
^“Susan Desmond-Hellmann”. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 2014. Bản gốc lưu trữ ngày 2 tháng 6 năm 2014. Truy cập ngày 2 tháng 6 năm 2014.
^“What We Do”. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 2014. Truy cập ngày 29 tháng 5 năm 2018.