- Foundations are no replacement for government funding, some philanthropists are arguing. Bill Gates has reportedly warned the Trump administration that the Gates Foundation will be unable to fill the gaps left by the dissolution of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which distributed $43.8 billion in aid in fiscal 2023.
Bill Gates has reportedly warned President Donald Trump’s administration that his philanthropic endeavors are no replacement for the U.S. government’s funding of global health care efforts.
The Microsoft cofounder turned billionaire philanthropist is petitioning the Trump administration to continue funding worldwide health programs, Reuters reported, citing two anonymous sources. Gates has met with legislators and the National Security Council about his concerns.
The Trump administration effectively dissolved the U.S. Agency for International Development, the body responsible for mass public health campaigns, including carrying out mass measles vaccination efforts. Last month, the administration dissolved 90% of the agency’s foreign aid contracts and put the majority of its workers on leave, firing 1,600 others. USAID distributed $43.8 billion in aid in fiscal 2023, according to Pew Research.
“President Trump will support polices [sic] that bolster our public health, cut programs that do not align with the agenda that the American people gave him a mandate in November to implement, and keep programs that put America First,” White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told Fortune in a statement.
Public health experts fear the White House’s USAID scrapping could have devastating global consequences, such as a rise in global malaria cases and deaths and the spread of HIV and tuberculosis (TB).
“Without immediate action, hard-won progress in the fight against TB is at risk,” Dr. Tereza Kasaeva, director of the WHO’s Global Programme on TB and Lung Health, said in a statement earlier this month.
The Gates Foundation, founded by Bill Gates and ex-wife Melinda French Gates in 2000, has a nearly $9 billion budget for 2025 and has funded malaria vaccine testing and the Gavi Alliance’s childhood immunization efforts.
The foundation did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment but told Reuters in a statement, “Bill was recently in Washington, D.C., meeting with decision makers to discuss the lifesaving impact of U.S. international assistance and the need for a strategic plan to protect the world’s most vulnerable while safeguarding America’s health and security.”
Foundations refuse to step in
Trump’s mission to curb global foreign aid would increase pressure on private organizations to pick up the slack, something philanthropic groups seem unwilling to do. Gates met with Trump at the White House in early February, calling on the administration to continue funding USAID. The Gates Foundation has made it clear that no private philanthropic effort would be able to replace government-funded foreign aid.
“There is no foundation—or group of foundations—that can provide the funding, workforce capacity, expertise, or leadership that the United States has historically provided to combat and control deadly diseases and address hunger and poverty around the world,” Rob Nabors, the North America director for the Gates Foundation, told media outlets earlier this month.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation, one of the wealthiest charities in the world, likewise shied away from committing additional funding to foreign aid and will continue to focus on addressing non-communicable diseases like heart disease and diabetes.
“Of course, more people are contacting us…We don’t have plans of stepping in, of filling gaps,” Flemming Konradsen, the Novo Nordisk Foundation’s scientific director of global health, said in a February interview with Reuters.
These foundations are turning away from taking on the government’s role in global health care aid because they aren’t designed to do so, according to Jesse Lecy, associate professor of data science and nonprofit studies at Arizona State University.
“The capital needed to sustain an initiative dwarfs the levels of capital needed for pilot programs that can establish the efficacy of new approaches,” he told Fortune in an email. “Scaling viable solutions requires partnerships.”
Philanthropic efforts are most effective when they invest in early research or pilot initiatives that are more risky, but less expensive. Then, nonprofits can build out and sustain successful projects in the long term, Lecy argued. Scaling nonprofits’ projects is something far more expensive than what foundations have resources for.
“What people misunderstand about foundations is that they are the venture capital arm of philanthropy, not the long-term capital that sustains programming,” he said.
