David Politis

As amazing as Bill Gates’ announcement was last week that he would be stepping down from Microsoft in 2008 to focus on giving away his vast fortune, it takes on even greater significance given today’s announcement that Warren Buffet is going to give away 85 percent of his vast wealth. (See the exclusive first report from Fortune magazine.)

As the second-richest man in the world, with his wealth tacked today at roughly $44 billion, Buffet’s plans charitable plans have him donating $37 billion (at today’s valuation of Bershire Hathaway) to five foundations — the bulk of it going to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (Here’s a link to the copy of Buffet’s letter to the Gates’ explaining his plans.)

The initial BMGF donation from Buffet is pegged at $1.5 billion (yes, billion). It (and the planned future donations to BMGF) do come with a catch — actually three catches to be exact.

1. Either Bill or Melinda Gates must be alive and actively involved in running BMGF.

2. BMGF must be operating so as to ensure that the Buffet donation qualifies as a non-taxable charitable gift.

3. Any Buffet gift to BMGF must be spent in the year it was received (with some exceptions) and BMGF must also spend what it has already been spending in charitable giving on top of the Buffet donation(s).

The Gates’ foundation will be given two years to scale up operationally to handle the additional charitable work, but starting in 2009, BMGF is gonna have to really heat-up to meet the minimal requirements of close to $3 billion in donations in that year alone.

Wow! So what kind of good could be done in Utah with even one-half of one percent of that anticipated $3B charitable windfall in 2009? That’s $15 million.

How many inner city schools could that outfit with full computer networks in SLC or Ogden?

How many underpriveleged or at risk Utah children, youth or adults could be trained in high-tech skills with $15MM?

How would you spend $15 million? Makes you start to think, huh?

This entry was posted on Monday, June 26th, 2006 at 11:40 pm and is filed under Execs, Money News, Fundings, Money News, Utah Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.