Gates Foundation carries big wallet in Seattle

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation says its top priority is improving the lives of people around the world, but a large chunk of its money lands within five miles of its headquarters.

Along with grants that go to many other continents and time zones, more than 12 percent of the foundation's gifts since its inception have stayed in Seattle. That's more than $2 billion out of a total of $16.76 billion.

The foundation, started by the Microsoft Corp. co-founder and his wife in 1994, has the international goals of overcoming hunger, poverty and disease. In this country, its focus is on education.

Most of the foundation's Seattle money goes to the region's burgeoning global health research industry, supporting scientists who seek such things as vaccines for AIDS and malaria. Among the top 10 Seattle recipients of Gates dollars, five use the money to focus on global health and global development, while the others concentrate on education and the arts.

Directly and indirectly, Gates generosity has had a huge effect on the city, from helping build a butterfly exhibit at the Pacific Science Center to larger donations that expanded the Seattle Art Museum, supported new medical and research centers in the city's South Lake Union neighborhood and spurred a building boom at the University of Washington, one of the Gates family's favorite causes.

Recipients of the Gates Foundation's largess - from an endowment of $35.9 billion - say it makes sense that Gates would support hometown institutions alongside the foundation's global goals.

Bill Gates, who co-chairs the foundation with his wife and father, grew up in Seattle and now lives across Lake Washington in the city's tony eastern suburbs. He stepped down in June from day-to-day involvement at Microsoft to devote his time to the foundation's work.

"The family has deep roots in the Seattle community," said Lisa Verhovek, the foundation's community relations manager. She said the roots have grown deeper as the foundation has invested more money in the community.

The foundation is by far the biggest donor to the University of Washington, where Gates' mother served on the Board of Regents for 18 years and his father and sister are on the board today.

University President Mark Emmert says the foundation, which has donated more than $500 million to the university in the past decade, has changed the local landscape in extraordinary ways.

Emmert thinks the foundation would still be UW's biggest donor even if it was based elsewhere.

"They pay for performance. The large gifts that they've made to the University of Washington have been in those areas that the foundation is focused on and where we happen to have particular strengths," he said.

The foundation has supported AIDS research at the University of Washington, as well as providing the dollars to grow its Global Health Department and start a new Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. But the foundation has also supported scholarships, overseas learning and research in the College of Education.

This theme was repeated in interviews with Gates-supported organizations all over Seattle. They say the foundation doesn't support organizations just because they are in Seattle and didn't spark the Seattle area's focus on global health.

"The global health community was here a long time before the Gates Foundation," Verhovek said.

"The foundation has played a catalyzing role. We did not form these organizations - they were here decades before we were - we have been a catalyst for growth," she said.

The biggest local recipient of foundation dollars - PATH, formerly known as the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health - was developing new technologies for saving lives 31 years ago.

Scott Jackson, PATH's vice president of external relations, said its mission hasn't changed over the years. But PATH has grown from a handful of employees to a staff of 750 and a budget of $218 million - 62 percent from the Gates Foundation.

Since 1995, the foundation has given $1.1 billion to PATH. The organization has been involved in many of the foundation's highest-profile projects, from HIV/AIDS prevention to vaccine distribution.

Current PATH projects include improving disease diagnosis far away from a medical lab, needleless injection guns, new birth control diaphragms, super-nutritious rice and water filtration.

The close relationship between PATH and the Gates Foundation relates more to their sympathetic missions - both believe in using technology to solve big problems - than to the proximity of their headquarters, Jackson said.

"The Gates Foundation has also served as a catalyst for other governments and other donors," Jackson said. "We are really becoming a major destination for global health activity for the developing world."

The Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, which started in 1976 with a $37,000 grant, now has a budget of about $30 million a year, 40 percent of which comes from the Gates Foundation. Since 1999, it has received about $61 million in Gates money.

"Their mission and our mission are so close that we would be doing something wrong if we weren't getting support from the Gates Foundation," said Ken Stuart, president and director of SBRI.

Stuart said the foundation's name recognition and ability to bring governments and nonprofits together has been just as essential as its money.

"They have really been a critical, and important and effective advocate for our field of global infectious diseases. They've created the visibility and validation that we struggled with for years," Stuart said.

Global health makes up $4.1 billion of Washington's state's $272.3 billion annual business activity, generating 3,656 research jobs, according to researchers at the University of Washington.

The Washington Global Health Alliance, a collaborative effort of the field's biggest players, was formed this year.

One of its first projects was to develop a high school curriculum on global health. It's also working with the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, whose Oct. 22-24 leadership conference will focus on the impact of global health on the region.

Lisa Cohen, director of the alliance, says you can no longer separate the Gates Foundation from the global health work being done in Seattle.

"Part of the reason that Bill and Melinda chose global health as a focus was because there was already a vibrant community here," Cohen said. "It's not as if the global health community has sprung up around the foundation. The foundation has enhanced the global health community."

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On the Net:

Gates Foundation: http://www.gatesfoundation.org

University of Washington: http://www.washington.edu/

PATH: http://www.path.org

SBRI: http://www.sbri.org

Washington Global Health Alliance: http://depts.washington.edu/pspgh/

Global health study: http://www.washington.edu/home/international/pdfs/wastateglobal-economicimpact.pdf