Conventional wisdom tells us all good things must come to an end. And that’s what the Gates Foundation is preparing for. Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates told Fortune first about their plans to shutter their $86 billion charitable foundation in 2045. (French Gates is no longer part of the foundation, having stepped down in 2024 from her role following the couple’s divorce. She now runs her own foundation, Pivotal Philanthropies, focused on gender equality and global health.)
This year, the Gates Foundation will spend a record $9 billion and cut as many as 500 staff jobs during the next five years as the world’s largest private foundation plans to shutter. The foundation’s motivation for its move is to accelerate giving to global health, poverty, and education, helping beneficiaries take ambitious bets now rather than maintaining operations indefinitely. These moves underscore how one of the defining philanthropic institutions of this century is reconfiguring for its sunsetting era.
The Gates Foundation’s move to spend down raises questions about who will fill their proverbial shoes. Perhaps it will be a figure like MacKenzie Scott, the philanthropist and ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who has donated $26 billion to thousands of organizations in just the past five years.
The Gates Foundation’s new timeline
The Gates Foundation’s board approved the largest budget in its 25-year history at $9 billion, a decision coming less than a year after Gates said the institution would close its doors by Dec. 31, 2045, and spend down roughly $200 billion over two decades. As part of The Giving Pledge, Gates has promised to give away about 99% of his fortune, calling the accelerated timeline a response to “pressing” global problems that can’t wait for traditional giving procedures.
The foundation has already distributed more than $100 billion since its inception, becoming a dominant funder in global health, vaccines, and antipoverty work, and an outsized player in U.S. K-12 education. The board also approved the foundation’s recommendation to increase the budgets of several programs for this year, ranging from women’s health to AI in U.S. education.
Job cuts to fund more grants
To hit its 2045 deadline while increasing its grantmaking, the Gates Foundation will cut up to 500 of its roughly 2,375 staff positions by 2030—about 20% of its headcount—through attrition and layoffs, according to a Jan. 14 press release. The board also approved a cap on operating costs, limiting overhead such as salaries, infrastructure, facilities, and travel to no more than $1.25 billion, or roughly 14% of the total budget.
“While progress is possible, it remains fragile, and delivering on our mandate requires a commitment to move forward with transparency for our employees and partners and disciplined stewardship of the foundation’s finite resources,” Mark Suzman, CEO of the Gates Foundation, said in a statement. He added that the reductions will be gradual and reviewed annually, rather than a one-time wave, as the organization shifts more dollars from operations into grants.
A new model of big philanthropy
Gates’ decision to sunset the foundation firmly places it in the “time-limited” camp, which is starting to gain traction among other modern mega-donors who argue that hoarding capital in perpetuity doesn’t work in today’s society. One other example is Scott, who has already donated $26 billion since 2020 to thousands of charities and has repeatedly helped organizations facing federal funding cuts.
In 2025, Scott issued three lifelines to organizations in the aftermath of federal funding cuts, including a $45 million gift to The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ+ youth crisis organization.
“This historic donation from MacKenzie Scott comes at a time when The Trevor Project has never needed it more,” Jaymes Black, CEO of The Trevor Project, said in a statement shared with Fortune. “LGBTQ+ youth in the U.S. are facing a growing mental health crisis, and the resources they have for support continue to be politicized and jeopardized.”
In 2025, Scott also made a $60 million donation to the Center for Disaster Philanthropy just as the Trump administration moved to slash the budget of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), an organization Americans rely on for help during and after hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, and floods. Scott also donated $80 million to historically Black college Howard University—a gift that came at an “opportune time,” helping the HBCU weather a federal government shutdown that delayed annual appropriations supporting student success, research, and hospital donations.
Scott is also a prime example of someone in the billionaire class who is actively attempting to share as much of her wealth as possible instead of holding on to it forever.
What the Gates Foundation closure means for nonprofits—and who fills the gap
For nonprofits focused on global health and development, the Gates announcement is a double-edged sword. It means more money will be dispersed in the near term, but it also sets a firm expiration date on one of the organizations they rely on the most. Many of the foundation’s biggest bets—from vaccines and disease eradication to agricultural innovation—often require long lead times and coordination with governments and other organizations. This raises the question of what happens after 2045.
As the Gates Foundation continues its 20-year shutdown process, pressure will grow on peers, like tech billionaires and next-gen heirs, to either step in to help or face questions of why they’re not doing enough. French Gates recently said there’s more the ultrawealthy can do. While more than 250 of the world’s wealthiest have signed the pledge, many have so far failed to live up to it.
“Have they given enough? No,” French Gates said in an interview with Wired published in December. “We’re trying to demonstrate for them: Go big. You can go big, you can go bold.”
