read my posting Downsouth. I am more than happy for the children that so desperately need the donation, but I found it very shallow that of all the philanthropical pursuits that he has done for years, this donation somehow has become so public.
I see news headlines about his donations every so often. Another recent one was $20,000,000 to a Seattle library ("the biggest single gift to a U.S. public library ever," according to the news story). This one's getting no special treatment except maybe by cynics who may report it and try to insinuate ulterior motives.
Also from the story dailynews.yahoo.com :
The Seattle donation is coming from the $2 billion William H. Gates Foundation which Gates established about three years ago to focus on world health, population and education issues.
Gates and his wife also established the $250 million Gates Library Foundation, which helps libraries in poor communities gain access to computer equipment and the Internet.
In some ways Gates seems to be molding his charitable career after Andrew Carnegie, the steel baron who almost single- handedly built the system of free public libraries throughout the English-speaking world.
Like Carnegie, Gates has said that he intends to give away most of his vast fortune before he dies. In Carnegie's case, that amounted to more than $350 million by the time he died in 1919, according to the Carnegie Foundation.
Looking at the insider link on Yahoo it looks like he "gave as gift" (usually meaning a charitable donation) about 16,000,000 shares over the past year. That's a lot of money. |
