Bill Gates to Give Another $29 Billion To Gates Foundation
The foundation says it plans to increase its annual payout by billions of dollars in coming years
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Bill Gates said he is giving another $20 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation endowment this month, and the foundation said it plans to dole out funds faster in the coming years.
The two announcements on Wednesday follow a recent Wall Street Journal article saying that the Gates Foundation was adjusting to possible changes in billionaire Warren Buffett’s plans for his charitable giving and that a little-known Buffett family foundation was preparing to receive an influx of money.
“As I look to the future, my plan is to give all my wealth to the foundation other than what I spend on myself and my family,” Mr. Gates, the Microsoft Corp. co-founder, wrote in a blog post Wednesday. He also detailed the billions that his friend Mr. Buffett has given to the Gates Foundation, noting that about half of the foundation’s resources so far have come from Mr. Buffett, the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
Mr. Gates’s latest gift would bolster the Gates Foundation’s endowment, which is roughly $50 billion. The Gates Foundation said Wednesday it would increase its payout by 50% over prepandemic levels, to about $9 billion annually by 2026 compared with about $6 billion pre-Covid 19.
Mr. Buffett, who has pledged to give away most of his wealth, has made annual gifts to the Gates Foundation since 2006, including a roughly $3 billion donation of Berkshire shares in June. He resigned as a Gates Foundation trustee in 2021.
The Journal reported in June that while Mr. Buffett hasn’t revealed publicly how his estate will be divided, officials at the Gates Foundation and the Susan T. Buffett Foundation have discussed in internal meetings that the amount left to the Buffett family foundation could be as high as $70 billion to $100 billion. An endowment of that size would make the Buffett foundation, which is a major supporter of abortion rights, one of the largest private philanthropies in the world, based on publicly available data.
Mr. Buffett didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
“Warren’s advice and thinking influenced the foundation in a profound way even before he made any gifts,” Mr. Gates wrote in his post Wednesday. “Warren, I can never adequately express how much I appreciate your friendship and guidance as well as your generosity.”
The foundation brought in more independent oversight after Mr. Gates and Melinda French Gates filed for divorce. Ms. French Gates subsequently indicated she will shift more of her wealth among other philanthropies. Under terms of the divorce, she agreed to resign from the foundation in 2023 if either she or her ex-husband decides they can no longer work together.
Mr. Gates wrote that he and Ms. French Gates approved an additional $2 billion in spending to help with Covid-19 response and US$1.5 billion was spent by the end of 2021. Mr. Gates wrote that they expected the extra spending to stop once the worst of the pandemic ended but it has become clear in all areas there is more work needed.
Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman wrote in a Wednesday announcement that, with support of its board, the foundation’s focus areas—health, gender equality, agriculture, financial inclusion and education—wouldn’t be changing.
Ms. French Gates said the foundation has spent more than two decades building relationships with a range of partners and this additional spending will help with those partners’ work.
Mr. Gates wrote that his personal focus is on pandemic prevention, global health, education, food costs and climate efforts, the latter funded through a Gates-backed venture Breakthrough Energy. He cited Ms. French Gates’s efforts on gender equality.
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Vacationers scratching their travel itch this season are sending prices through the roof. Here’s how some are making trade-offs.
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Capri Coffer socks away $600 a month to help fund her travels. The Atlanta health-insurance account executive and her husband couldn’t justify a family vacation to the Dominican Republic this summer, though, given what she calls “astronomical” plane ticket prices of $800 each.
The price was too high for younger family members, even with Coffer defraying some of the costs.
Instead, the family of six will pile into a rented minivan come August and drive to Hilton Head Island, S.C., where Coffer booked a beach house for $650 a night. Her budget excluding food for the two-night trip is about $1,600, compared with the $6,000 price she was quoted for a three-night trip to Punta Cana.
“That way, everyone can still be together and we can still have that family time,” she says.
With hotel prices and airfares stubbornly high as the 2023 travel rush continues—and overall inflation squeezing household budgets—this summer is shaping up as the season of travel trade-offs for many of us.
Average daily hotel rates in the top 25 U.S. markets topped $180 year-to-date through April, increasing 9.9% from a year ago and 15.6% from 2019, according to hospitality-data firm STR.
Online travel sites report more steep increases for summer ticket prices, with Kayak pegging the increase at 35% based on traveler searches. (Perhaps there is no more solid evidence of higher ticket prices than airline executives’ repeated gushing about strong demand, which gives them pricing power.)
The high prices and economic concerns don’t mean we’ll all be bunking in hostels and flying Spirit Airlines with no luggage. Travellers who aren’t going all-out are compromising in a variety of ways to keep the summer vacation tradition alive, travel agents and analysts say.
“They’re still out there and traveling despite some pretty real economic headwinds,” says Mike Daher, Deloitte’s U.S. transportation, hospitality and services leader. “They’re just being more creative in how they spend their limited dollars.”
For some, that means a cheaper hotel. Hotels.com says global search interest in three-star hotels is up more than 20% globally. Booking app HotelTonight says nearly one in three bookings in the first quarter were for “basic” hotels, compared with 27% in the same period in 2019.
For other travellers, the trade-offs include a shorter trip, a different destination, passing on premium seat upgrades on full-service airlines or switching to no-frills airlines. Budget-airline executives have said on earnings calls that they see evidence of travellers trading down.
Deloitte’s 2023 summer travel survey, released Tuesday, found that average spending on “marquee” trips this year is expected to decline to $2,930 from $3,320 a year ago. Tighter budgets are a factor, he says.
Too much demand
Wendy Marley is no economics teacher, but says she’s spent a lot of time this year refreshing clients on the basics of supply and demand.
The AAA travel adviser, who works in the Boston area, says the lesson comes up every time a traveler with a set budget requests help planning a dreamy summer vacation in Europe.
“They’re just having complete sticker shock,” she says.
Marley has become a pro at Plan B destinations for this summer.
For one client celebrating a 25th wedding anniversary with a budget of $10,000 to $12,000 for a five-star June trip, she switched their attention from the pricey French Riviera or Amalfi Coast to a luxury resort on the Caribbean island of St. Barts.
To Yellowstone fans dismayed at ticket prices into Jackson, Wyo., and three-star lodges going for six-star prices, she recommends other national parks within driving distance of Massachusetts, including Acadia National Park in Maine.
For clients who love the all-inclusive nature of cruising but don’t want to shell out for plane tickets to Florida, she’s been booking cruises out of New York and New Jersey.
Not all of Marley’s clients are tweaking their plans this summer.
Michael McParland, a 78-year-old consultant in Needham, Mass., and his wife are treating their family to a luxury three-week Ireland getaway. They are flying business class on Aer Lingus and touring with Adventures by Disney. They initially booked the trip for 2020, so nothing was going to stand in the way this year.
McParland is most excited to take his teen grandsons up the mountain in Northern Ireland where his father tended sheep.
“We decided a number of years ago to give our grandsons memories,” he says. “Money is money. They don’t remember you for that.”
Fare first, then destination
Chima Enwere, a 28-year old piano teacher in Fayetteville, N.C., is also headed to the U.K., but not by design.
Enwere, who fell in love with Europe on trips the past few years, let airline ticket prices dictate his destination this summer to save money.
He was having a hard time finding reasonable flights out of Raleigh-Durham, N.C., so he asked for ideas in a Facebook travel group. One traveler found a round-trip flight on Delta to Scotland for $900 in late July with reasonable connections.
He was budgeting $1,500 for the entire trip—he stays in hostels to save money—but says he will have to spend more given the pricier-than-expected plane ticket.
“I saw that it was less than four digits and I just immediately booked it without even asking questions,” he says.
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