How we work
Committed to the principle that every person deserves the opportunity to lead a healthy and productive life, the Gates Foundation is focused on improving health and expanding opportunity the United States and low-income countries. We create change by funding and partnering with organizations that deliver impact on the ground. We identify promising ideas, invest in the people and institutions bringing them to life, and help those solutions reach scale. In this way, we have distributed more than US$100 billion in grant funding to thousands of organizations around the world since 2000.
Our approach
We see health and development challenges as issues that could be addressed through focused, catalytic philanthropy. Our focus is on developing long-term strategies that take on critical domestic US and global issues where we believe we can have the greatest catalytic impact.
Whether the issue is malaria prevention, climate-related impact on crop yields, or family planning, we start by listening to the people who experience the challenges: What do they need that isn’t available to them? What barriers stand in their way? What factors are unique to their geographic or cultural context? We also consult with local advocates and community leaders who have worked on the issue and know the complexities. We then determine where our resources and relationships can make the greatest difference.
We focus most of our investment on solutions that could have transformative impact and seek to avoid substituting for public- or private-sector spending.
How we fund
Our work is carried out in partnership with both grantees and private companies. In both cases, we work closely with each partner throughout the term of our funding commitment. We collaborate to formulate plans, monitor progress, make strategic adjustments, and ensure that the resulting products or services are widely accessible and affordable. In the case of scientific research, we require that the resulting data and results be shared openly.
We also support and help fund coalitions of governments, donors, researchers, communities, and companies so all parties can collaborate on solving urgent problems. The issues we engage in are deeply rooted and complex, and none can be solved easily or quickly or through our efforts alone.
Outside of our support for a core set of global health institutions, our investments are time-bound with others stepping in for scale-up and delivery over the long term.
We have more than three dozen topic-focused teams at the foundation, each with a grantmaking budget. When a team wants to enlist private-sector science and technology expertise, it works via the Strategic Investment Fund, which has a separate budget for funding companies’ work on our charitable projects.
Funding summary
More about our process
The Gates Foundation has teams with deep expertise in science, data, and policy—working alongside partners to support solutions grounded in evidence and local context. Grantees and projects are chosen according to their ability to create impact on the foundation’s priority issues. Each team at the foundation makes their own grant decisions, but they all follow the same four-stage grantmaking process. The duration of each phase depends on the complexity of the project and the capacity and geographic location of the prospective partner or partners.
Phase 1. Developing the project
Our program officers, who are experts in their fields, seek out projects that align with the team’s strategic priorities—often in consultation with other foundation colleagues, researchers, policymakers, and organizations working in the field.
Phase 2. Soliciting proposals
If the team decides to proceed with a project, it seeks potential grantees whose mission and capabilities might be a good fit for carrying out the work, using one or more avenues:
- Direct solicitation. When we know that an organization is well-suited to perform the work, we directly solicit an early-phase concept memo or proposal.
- Discussion. We sometimes invite organizations to discuss the concept with us, so we can gauge their interest and capacity to do the work. If they appear to be a good fit, we invite them to submit a concept memo or proposal.
- Request for proposal (RFP). When we want to broaden our grantee search or fund multiple organizations for a project, we may issue an RFP. Public RFPs, including for our Grand Challenges grants, are posted on our website; private RFPs are directed to specific organizations.
We give each prospective grantee guidelines and templates for developing a proposal and a budget.
Phase 3. Proposal review and approval
A program officer reviews the submitted materials with internal (and sometimes external) experts and recommends changes. The team also does due diligence to confirm the applicant organization’s tax-exempt status, determine how a partnership would need to be structured, and assess risk. Our legal and financial teams may also participate during this phase.
The submitted proposals and budgets are reviewed at multiple levels within the foundation, with more levels of review for complex grants and partnership contracts. A foundation executive makes the final decision on whether to approve the proposed grant.
Before funded activities can begin, the foundation and the grantee organization sign an agreement that includes intended results and targets, measurement and reporting milestones, delivery schedule, and payment schedule.
Phase 4. Grant allocation and project closeout
Throughout the life of the grant, the program officer and the grantee organization stay in close touch about ongoing progress and challenges. Open communication is crucial to building trust and ensuring the best possible results. On occasion, a program officer or foundation staff member may join an advisory committee at the organization or take a seat on its board of directors.
At the end of the project, the grantee works with the program officer to produce a final report that summarizes the results achieved and lessons learned.
We aim for financial efficiency and effectiveness in our funding while ensuring that the grantee’s costs for delivering results are fully covered. When working with prospective grantees on their proposals, we try to gain a complete and accurate understanding of the cost of carrying out the work.
When making grants to universities and other research institutions, foundations have more flexibility than the U.S. government does to count indirect “facilities and administrative” costs as direct costs. For example, project management costs, lab fees, and information technology and data charges for a project are allowable as direct costs in Gates Foundation grants. Item-by-item analysis is important to accurately compare a Gates Foundation grant to a grant from another entity. Our Indirect Cost Policy explains this further.
From the earliest phases of the grantmaking process, we work with grantees to define the overall results we hope to achieve, the data needed to measure progress and results, and how to evaluate that data. To give our grantees flexibility in how they carry out the work, we do not require them to report on all of their activities. Instead, we focus on critical metrics that support continued learning, adjustment, and alignment with our shared goals. The nature and frequency of measurement and evaluation depend on the type of work, and we ensure that our grantees have the capacity and support to generate and analyze high-quality evidence.
We acknowledge the ongoing debate about evaluation methods in many fields in which we work. We avoid one-size-fits-all prescriptions and strive to make selective, high-quality evaluation an integral part of the projects we fund. Our Evaluation Policy explains our approach in greater detail.
We occasionally provide targeted funding to private companies that have the expertise to help us achieve our charitable goals, whether it’s the development and manufacture of new vaccines and contraceptives or innovations for the public benefit in mobile banking to serve the needs of low-income entrepreneurs. Many companies with the ability to create and deliver products and services that address inequities do not have a financial incentive to pursue this work absent targeted grant funding.
Our Strategic Investment Fund (SIF) spearheads much of the foundation’s work with private-sector partners. In collaboration with our program teams, the SIF team designs partnerships with private companies that can include equity investments, loans, or volume guarantees. We initiate these investments to further our philanthropic goals, not to generate income for the foundation; however, any financial returns are reinvested in our programs.
As with our funding to grantees, our investments in private companies are bound by our global access requirements, which mandate that any resulting scientific knowledge be promptly and broadly disseminated and that products developed with our funding are made broadly available and accessible at an affordable price. Our Global Access Statement provides further details.