The Gates Foundation Is Missing Its Chance to Be a Partner

(photo credit: World Economic Forum)

The Gates Foundation is in a unique position. It has the financial resources of a government donor, without the restrictions. It is not accountable to national leaders, elected officials, or taxpayers. It's not obligated to support any actor's foreign policy goals. It doesn't have to support Egypt as a thank-you for making peace with Israel, or Armenia because of the powerful Armenian Diaspora. Its only responsibility to funders is to Bill and Melinda Gates, and their interests. That's in the foundation's by-laws.

A lot of NGOs are founder-driven, and in principle there isn't anything wrong with that. Very often the founders in question are people of conviction and vision, and following their chosen course isn't a bad start. I don't think there is any reason to think otherwise of Bill or Melinda Gates. The problem is one of scale. In most cases these NGOs are small; doing whatever your founder wants with $500,000 is a lot different than doing whatever your founder wants with $1 billion. The Gates Foundation's size and global impact requires more introspection.

There is an opportunity here. Most donors are accountable one way to funders and another way to their beneficiaries, sometimes in conflicting ways. The Gates foundation is morally accountable only to the communities it works with. I'd like to see the Gates Foundation take advantage of its freedom from foreign policy goals and donor influence.

It could form a radical partnership with the developing world by including development stakeholders that too often don't get a voice in government-driven aid. They could bring developing-world NGO leaders, activists, and thinkers into their program decisions and evaluations.  They could be driven by demand, by the identified needs of the developing world, instead of donor priorities chosen by awkward consensus.

I'd also like the Gates Foundation to be more transparent. Their website should have a database on every project they have ever supported. We should be able to access their full financial reporting, program indicators, and analyses. We should be able to download it as an excel file or a detailed report. We should know why they fund the programs they fund, and exactly how much money they put in.

I think that Gates should make these changes because it would lead to them doing better work. On a larger scale, I think they would also be able to help bring about change to the way that recipient and donor governments do business. With the amount of money they have to provide, they could turn the whole funding model inside out. One large demand-driven project in a country would lead to other projects needing to collaborate with it, and alter their own methods accordingly.

Gates has to make these changes for its own future, as well. Founder-driven NGOs face a crisis when their brilliant founders retire. What do they do without the guidance of their visionary? Smaller organizations usually end up accepting government grants and have to adjust their business model and professional priorities to allow for that. Gates is so big that won't be true. Even with the 50-year sunset, Bill and Melinda Gates are not going to have the vigor to personally guide the foundation to the end of its existence. If they don't establish a practice of transparently and  inclusively choosing and evaluating projects now, what is going to happen when Bill and Melinda don't have the energy to drive things anymore?