University of Washington: The Gates' favourite university
Our analysis of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation university philanthropy between 2014-18 threw up some interesting facts. Some were a surprise, and some less so. The first noteworthy fact that we can take away from our study, is that the Gates Foundation giving to universities is significantly weighted to US institutions. Perhaps that is not a surprise.
According to our analysis of Gates funding, 71% of all university donations ends up at US institutions. In other words, between 2014-2018 they gave $4,266m to 164 American universities. Another perhaps unsurprising outcome of our research is that the Gates hometown university, the University of Washington in Seattle, is the biggest university beneficiary of the Foundation’s giving. According to tax submissions, between 2014-18 the University of Washington received $1,052m from the Gates Foundation – 17% of all Gates Foundation university giving during this period. The highpoint of giving to the University of Washington was in 2016 when the Foundation made a series of donations amounting to $621m. The Gates Foundation grants database records a significant amount of that sum being made for “updating the high-quality, scientific, quantitative evidence base to improve population health”. This probably relates to the University’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation which was reported to receiving a $280m donation In 2016, Gates also made a $210m donation to support a capital campaign. The details are not reported by the Foundation. The outstanding amount was made up by over 30 further donations.
Along with the University of Washington, the other universities comprising the top 5 beneficiaries of Gates Foundation giving (2014-18) are John Hopkins University ($552m), Cornell University ($210m), Harvard ($206m) and the University of California, San Francisco ($203m). The top 10 university beneficiaries of Gates Foundation giving collectively received $3,025m, around 50% of all Gates giving to universities. In other words, the remaining 386 universities shared the remaining $2,992m in Gates giving. 8 out of the top 10 beneficiaries are US universities. The University of Oxford and the University of Manitoba are the only non-US universities to appear in the top 10 of beneficiary institutions. We are going to continue blogging on our Gates research, with a look at its giving to universities in Europe next week.