Gates’ ‘Retirement’

Posted on June 28, 2008

Not exactly retirement per se, but the big news in the tech world the last few weeks has most certainly been centered on Bill’s departure from the day-to-day operations at Microsoft.

He’s stepping out of that role into one drastically different in many ways, yet strangely familiar. Moving full-time into the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and its philanthropic work brings Bill into an odd situation of giving money away instead of seeing how much can be made. That’s the different part.

The familiar part is he’s going to be involved in another rapidly growing company. The Foundation has emerged in little more than a decade as the world’s largest philanthropy. With 500 employees already and the expectation of doubling in size in the next year or so, this almost looks like a mirror of Microsoft. Same image, only everything is reversed.

The Foundation already has $38 billion to work with and will soon swell with the added wealth of another famous billionaire. Rapid growth has already created the need to start construction on a new Seattle headquarters to house the growing workforce.

That other famous billionaire is Warren Buffett who decided a couple of years ago to donate most of his wealth to the Foundation. That will start in 2009 and means the endowment will double. That’s good but it also means a lot of hard work because by law at least 3 billion dollars will have to be given away to avoid tax penalties under the non-profit tax laws. It is pretty easy to give it away, but to do so wisely is where the rub will come in.