Re:Bill Gates is named world's richest person again
by josefresco on Monday March 02, 2015 @12:34PM
(#9133104)
I wonder if an element of the foundation could be helping to scale or "staff up" these NGO's to be able to scale/deal with an influx of funding?
Obviously, "staffing up" is time intensive, but I would think they would need an alternative approach if finding worthy organizations becomes difficult.
Re:Bill Gates is named world's richest person again
by sharkweek on Monday March 02, 2015 @12:49PM
(#9133191)
I do think there is a pretty big incentive now for really smart people to work on the world's most important problems (disease, famine, poverty, education, etc) knowing there is a lot of capital to back it up. I know internally at TGF they've been working to market their grant programs better to encourage more young "startup" companies apply.
It's interesting to think about from an entrepreneurial perspective, that The Gates Foundation has plenty of capital to "invest" but the companies and programs are often not mature enough to warrant massive grants. There might be a ton of small NGOs doing awesome work all over the world, and they can take small grants (XX,000-XXX,000), but imagine what a nightmare it becomes for them if given the burden of tens of millions of dollars all the sudden. Money solves a lot of problems in the nonprofit world, but sudden cash infusions can often create a lot of bizarre problems.
And on the other side, even if The Gates Foundation gives thousands of six figure grants out, that's not going to make a dent in the overall pool of cash.