Gates Foundation unveils $9 billion budget and plans to cut staff

The Gates Foundation announced Wednesday that it will spend a record $9 billion in 2026, maximizing its spending in key areas such as global health. At the same time it will begin reducing the number of staff positions it has by as much as 500 over five years. This announcement comes in the wake of last year’s surprise decision to shutter the foundation in 2045.

The planned layoffs mark another major shift for one of the largest and most influential foundations in the world at a time when many of its long-term priorities, such as addressing poverty and improving global health, have been undermined by cuts in U.S. government spending by the Trump administration.

Bill Gates said last year that the foundation would spend $200 billion over the next 20 years and then close as part of his plan to give away the bulk of his wealth. This week, he and other members of the foundation’s board approved the largest budget in the foundation’s history, topping last year’s budget of $8.74 billion. With that new dollar amount, the foundation will increase budgets for several programs, including women’s health, vaccine development, polio eradication, AI, and U.S. education.

The board also approved a proposal to cap operating costs — including staff, salaries, infrastructure required to run the organization, facilities, and travel expenses — at no more than $1.25 billion, or approximately 14% of the foundation’s budget. To meet that goal, the grantmaker will cut up to 500 of its 2,375 staff positions by 2030, including some open roles that may remain unfilled. The effort to reduce the staff count along with other expenses will be done incrementally and reviewed annually rather than coming in “a big wave,” foundation CEO Mark Suzman told the Chronicle of Philanthropy in an interview.

“We will do this thoughtfully, carefully, and systematically,” he said. “We’ll be recalibrating it every year. That 500-person target is a maximum target. I very much hope that we won’t have to do it as large as that number.”

Spending money prudently

Suzman said he and other board members felt the operating costs cap was necessary. If left unchecked, the foundation’s operating expenditures, currently around 13% of the budget, were projected to approach 18% by the end of the decade, Suzman said. The board wants to ensure that the foundation is spending money prudently and with a focus on maximizing the dollars spent and resources provided to the people the foundation serves, he said.

The Gates Foundation is also the world’s largest foundation to decide to close, and many in philanthropy have wondered how its leaders will go about planning an exit strategy, said Elizabeth Dale, acting executive director and Frey Foundation Chair for Family Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University’s philanthropy center. She works with a group of about 20 foundations that are spending down their endowments. Sunsetting a foundation with the massive wealth of the Gates Foundation is unprecedented and will likely require strong strategic planning, Dale said before the release of the new budget and staffing details.

“My sense is that they spent the last year really trying to home in on their priorities and their strategy,” she said.

What’s next

Many of the foundation’s core areas of work and achievement over the past decades have suffered due to humanitarian aid cuts from the United States and other countries last year, making philanthropic support more critical. In a recent blog post, Bill Gates noted that the “world went backwards” last year when it comes to child deaths, with the number going up for the first time this century, from 4.6 million in 2024 to 4.8 million in 2025.

“The next five years will be difficult as we try to get back on track and work to scale up new lifesaving tools,” Gates wrote. “Yet I remain optimistic about the long-term future.” In an effort to address that backsliding, the foundation is expected to accelerate spending in three priority areas over the next two decades: maternal and child health, infectious disease prevention, and poverty reduction, Suzman said. It also is expected to increase some grant sizes over time, though not across the board.

In the same post, Gates also discussed the challenges that artificial intelligence poses, warning that the technology could disrupt the job market and be misused by “bad actors” if more attention isn’t paid to how it’s developed, governed, and deployed.

At the same time, Gates has championed AI adoption. The foundation was among a coalition of funders that last July pledged to offer $1 billion in grants and investments to help develop AI tools for public defenders, social workers, and other frontline workers in the United States over the next 15 years. And, Suzman noted, AI is one of the foundation’s portfolio areas that will continue to expand.

The foundation also is expanding its footprint in India and Africa. Earlier this week, it announced the creation of a new Africa and India Offices Division. Staff on the HIV and tuberculosis teams at Gates Foundation headquarters in Seattle also will be downsized as that work largely shifts to offices in Africa, he said.

20 more years to go

Though the foundation has announced plans to close, Suzman continues to remind people internally and externally that 20 years is still a significant amount of time for the Gates Foundation to operate and make an impact.

“We are moving into what I believe is going to be the most impactful period of the Gates Foundation in its history,” he said. “We’ve learned a huge amount over the last quarter century. We’ve built expertise, credibility, and partnerships. We now have a set of goals that are allowing us to focus with greater intentionality.”

____

https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.