Bonum Certa Men Certa

Role of the Gates Foundation Comes Under Pressure Due to Shareholder Conflicts

Businessman holding a crystal globe



Summary: Large foundations and the Gates Foundation in particular meet scrutiny as their grip on the world is better realised by today's press and the impact is explained

THE Gates Foundation continues its endeavours alongside similar rich people's foundations, whose function is to improve someone's image and sometimes make a profit at the same time. According to this new press release, there is passing of money from Gates to Rockefeller (they already collaborate on some projects in Africa) as though Rockefeller doesn't have enough funds. This has proven to be baffling to many:



Not that helping “emerging donors” develop strategies for “effective giving” is an unworthy goal — indeed, it is likely the most efficient way to impart best practices in lean administrative costs and minimal philanthropic waste. At a time of severe economic anxiety, however, one does wonder precisely why $3.5 million is the magic figure here. Could the same objective be met with $2.5 million? Or $1.5 million? What, exactly, is this money paying for?


Unfortunately for the Gates Foundation, more and more writers realise what it's up to. Here is what someone wrote in India last month, insinuating that Gates' investments had strings attached to them. It's a code for control and we will show some more examples of this later today.

Last week, an article on Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation becoming one of the biggest donors for the World Health Organisation (WHO) had many exclaiming how wonderful a man Gates is to give away so much money. Indeed, Gates must be the biggest philanthropist of all times. Yet, there in unease in the health sector across the world about one person or his foundation setting the global agenda on health.

[...]

The Global Health Watch Report-2 (GHW2) published in October 2008 points out that the Gates Foundation is governed by the Gates family with no board of trustees; nor any formal parliamentary or legislative scrutiny. "There is no answerability to the governments of low-income countries, nor to the WHO. Little more than the court of public opinion exists to hold it accountable," says the report.This lack of accountability and transparency is cited as a major problem by health experts.

The ties between the Gates Foundation and pharmaceutical industry has also come under scrutiny as Gates funded organisation like the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) has many pharmaceutical companies, especially those from the vaccine industry, as its members. GAVI has pushed many expensive vaccines into national immunization programmes in developing countries. This according to GHW2 has led "health activists to question if the Foundation is converting global health problems into business opportunities" for the pharma industry.

The Gates' Foundation's position on intellectual property (IP) rights is also a cause for concern. After all, Microsoft, along with other corporations, is pushing to strengthen IP rights and patent laws even further. Stronger IP rights will affect developing countries' right to allow generic companies to manufacture essential medicines at affordable prices. Patents and monopolies only make medicines more expensive and inaccessible to majority of the people.

[...]

The emergence of cash rich players including World Bank, the Gates Foundation and GAVI, along with the shift to the public-private partnership mode in health, has left the WHO often following an agenda, rather than setting it.


It is a good article overall, as it makes clearer some of the fundamental dangers with this phenomenon in general (but also this one foundation specifically).

Indians have already realised that Gates has GMO-oriented investments, which then lead him to promoting GMO in India. The problem with it is dependence in particular. India should not have to buy its seeds from abroad or pay a tax to companies like Monsanto each time some food is required. That's pretty much what Gates has been advancing though. And now we learn that Gates awards $1.6M for dwarf wheat research and there is greater control of agricultural science using funds as a stick/carrot approach:

Scientists on cutting edge



[...]

The event was hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.


Here come the Rockefellers again, the context being agriculture. From The Independent:

"There is some vital work being done by the Gates Foundation, by the Rockefellers, the State Department," he says candidly. "But I see a disconnect ? they all talk about yield as if farmers in Africa have a choice: to sow particular types of seed, to get to market. But these are the poorest, most disenfranchised farmers in the world. They often have a small plot of dust and that's it.


This is an area that we explored before. Basically, the Gates Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation both advance GMO in Africa. Like in India, the local population is often resentful about it, at least those who understand the ramifications. Many people simply distrust Gates, even though his foundation claims to be charitable and well-meaning, especially when it comes to science. Gates has no academic science background and he tends to be guided/exploited by people with agenda.

"But since I worked on the IBM PC BASIC and the Model 100, I haven’t had a chance to actually create a program myself."

--Bill Gates



Speaking of agenda, as the health chief the Gates Foundation appointed a bullying manager from the pharmaceutical cartel. His surname is Yamada and he issued threats against those who stood in his way. Sadly, at least two publications were giving him a platform to promote his agenda last month [1, 2]. As we demonstrated many times before, the pharmaceutical cartel seems to be using the Gates Foundation as a host from which to promote its products. In turn, the Gates Foundation invests money in the pharmaceutical cartel.

The Atlantic raises the issue of foundations being investors (which are also exempted from tax):

What Happens When Charities Become Major Shareholders?



[...]

Large foundations generally have significant investment portfolios. Often, they're most interested in bonds and high-dividend stocks, so that they can use the income they generate for their contributions to the poor. Of course, the opportunity cost of holding onto all that wealth is having less of your assets to distribute to the needy more immediately. But there's certainly something to be said for the stability perpetual income provides.

[...]

This is a difficult internal conflict that is likely becoming increasingly common, as the non-profit industry grows and the rich more commonly provide stock gifts to charities. Indeed, Buffett alone has promised to eventually give 85% of his Berkshire Hathaway holdings to charities. The easiest solution to avoid the conflict might be to sell all stock and rely on fixed income only, but that isn't necessarily in the firm's best interest either, as stocks often outperform debt. So they will inevitably remain shareholders. In that role, how should non-profits behave?


Here is another new article which is borderline criticism (a rarity from philanthropy.com):

Perhaps the most troubling issues posed by the Gates-Buffett crusade is its potential to intensify the inequities that exist both in the nonprofit world and in the rest of society.

Foundations, corporations, and other forms of institutional philanthropy tend to favor the nation’s most-privileged citizens and neglect the neediest people and organizations. An outsize share of the money from those institutions goes to established colleges, hospitals, and arts and cultural organizations. Only a small amount finds its way to organizations that serve vulnerable children, low-income people, minorities, women, the disabled, and other disadvantaged constituencies. A tiny portion of philanthropic money is channeled to groups that seek to influence public policies.

Very wealthy individuals have an even more unbalanced record when it comes to philanthropy.

[...]

The infusion of additional great sums of money by very wealthy individuals is likely to increase societal inequities, the gap between large and small nonprofit organizations, and the disparity between privileged and disadvantaged citizens.


In reality, such foundations tend to take away function from governments that are elected by the people for the people. This means that few rich families can become agenda setters. Those who value their democracy need to resist it.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopfarms Slopping Away at "Linux" and Spreading Microsoft Misinformation
Slopfarms don't comprehend this as they lack actual comprehension, they're just parrots
GitHub the Company Has, in Effect, Just Died (Time to Look for Alternatives)
To Microsoft, what's left of GitHub after dismantling/folding it is some "training set" (people's code, without permission to "train" i.e. misuse under the guise of "GenAI" plagiarism)
Linux Foundation Says "Housekeeping", "Hung", "Normal", "Native Feature/Support" and "Girl/Girls" Are Offensive Words
Bombing people is OK, just use the right "terms"
It Looks More Like Microsoft GitHub Layoffs
GitHub is just losing loads of money
 
Links 12/08/2025: More Sabotage of Underwater Cable Ahead of Russian Alaska Summit
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Will Not Miss Microsoft GitHub, It Was Only Good at Harvesting a Lot of Code for Plagiarism-as-a-Service
investors are apparently willing to lose money for buzzwords
Links 12/08/2025: Science, Hardware, and Ukraine Excluded From Negotiations About Its Future
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/08/2025: Meditation, OpenStreetMap, Smolweb, and More
Links for the day
Google News is Dying: Most of Its Top Stories Now Are LLM Slop With Slop Images (i.e. 100% Fake 'Content')
Google News has been drowning in this sort of stuff for quite some time
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 11, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 11, 2025
Our Predictions Were Right: GitHub Dying as Losses Pile Up (as a Company It Cannot Continue to Exist, It's Not 'Free Hosting')
GitHub always lost money
Links 11/08/2025: Meritless Twitter Suspensions and Disney Scraps Deepfake Dwayne Johnson
Links for the day
Gemini Links 11/08/2025: Upgrading Debian Bookworm and Better Quality PDFs From Gemini Pages
Links for the day
Currys PCWorld Lied a Decade Ago, 10 Years Later It Still Effectively Voids Your Warranty for Installing GNU/Linux Despite It Being Increasingly Mainstream
Microsoft gatekeepers
Team GNOME Has Libeled Me for Nearly 20 Years
we are not dealing with sane people
Experience With Airlines in 'Web Sites' and in 'Apps'
In a lot of ways, Stallman Was Right about what JavaScript would turn out to be
Open Does Not Mean Free
wiser to ask if some program is freedom-respecting
The Register MS Takes Money From Companies Banned by the Biden and Trump Administrations (National Security Risk)
today's sponsor
Sabotaging GNU/Linux PCs (and Users) is Not a 'Joke'
maybe cruelty is the very objective
How We Process Screenshots of Slop to Suitably Tag Them as Slop
everything is a single command
Links 11/08/2025: Data Breaches, Politics, and Climate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 10, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, August 10, 2025
Gemini Links 11/08/2025: Tea Caffeine Hot and Super ZZ Zero
Links for the day
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, Brian Fagioli, and Other Serial Sloppers
Maybe Microsoft wants to dub this "Web5"
Gemini Links 10/08/2025: Residents Management Company, Automation, and Politics
Links for the day
Links 10/08/2025: AOL Ending Dial-up
Links for the day
Seductive Mirage or Allure of Complex, Proprietary Coffee Machines (or Similar White Elephants)
Software is a lot like those things
Links 10/08/2025: Webrings, “AI Sunglasses” and “AI Eyeglasses”, US Administration Intensifies Attacks on Science and Research
Links for the day
Sometimes Newer is Worse
We generally need to reject this dumb notion that "old" means bad
The Code Used to Make Techrights Fits on a Seventh of a Floppy Disk (or 100KB When Compressed)
For the sake of comparison I've just downloaded the latest version of WordPress. The ZIP file is 27.2MB in size, or ~27,200KB.
What They Tell Young Programmers
Coding in 2025
Simpler is Better When Simple is Enough
Over-complicating things to "sell" new versions is so 1990s
Links 10/08/2025: From Social Control Media to Prison, New Examples of Windows TCO
Links for the day
Sloppy Reporting About Slop, or How The Register MS Lowers Its Standards
Maybe the management isn't even aware of this
IBM's Strategy: Cull 'Expensive' Workers, Replace Them With Cheaper Ones
So far we saw not even one rebuttal or challenge to the claim of Red Hat layoffs scheduled for tomorrow
If You Attack Somebody Too Much You Legitimise and Strengthen That Somebody
at the end those attacks add up to a "martyr" status
The Man Who Helped Microsoft Kill Linux is Trying to Delay Our Lawsuits Against Him
By conservative estimates, and based on court documents submitted by them, they're prepared to spend over a million dollars on lawyers, fighting against me and my wife
Gemini Links 10/08/2025: Gen Con 2025 and Framework Laptop
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 09, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, August 09, 2025