After the divorce of Bill Gates and Melinda, what will happen to the largest family charity in the world?

Bill and Melinda divorced after 27 years of engagement

It began with a safari in Africa, as the young man and woman Bill and Melinda Gates went to the brown continent for the first time in 1993, and took a truck to enjoy watching animals and beautiful landscapes, in addition to discussing their priorities as two married couples, but what they witnessed there sparked a debate Broader about the tremendous wealth they were already amassing.

Writer Sophie Alexander said in a report published by Bloomberg News that Melinda said in a speech in Abu Dhabi in 2016: "It was our first sustainable look at extreme poverty ... it was the beginning of our learning about the challenges facing the world's poorest people."

It also marked the beginning of the "Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation", a giant American charitable foundation that the couple had built over the course of their 27-year marriage that ended last week.

In the joint statement announcing their separation, Bill and Melinda wrote that they will continue to run the charity together.

"After a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we made a decision to end our marriage," the couple added in the joint statement published by Gates, founder of the famous "Microsoft" company, on the social networking site "Twitter".

"Over the past 27 years, we have raised three wonderful children and built a foundation that works around the world to enable all people to lead a healthy and productive life," the statement reads.

The statement continued: "We continue to share faith in that mission and will continue our work together in the foundation, but we no longer believe that we can grow together as a couple in this next stage of our lives."

Despite this confirmation from their side, the news of the divorce shocked the philanthropic world.

Bill and Melinda - who are currently worth about $ 145 billion - signed in 2010 the "Giving Pledge" initiative, which is a promise they have prepared to encourage the world's richest people to donate most of their wealth in their lives, or to stipulate that in their will after And their death.

For their part, the couple committed to donating "the vast majority of our assets to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation."

It is still not known how the money will be distributed after the news of the couple's separation.

The "Giving Pledge" is not legally binding in any way, and Bill and Melinda have already explored other ways to give, tackling climate change and gender inequality, respectively, through their investment firms.

Elizabeth Dale, an associate professor of nonprofit leadership at the University of Seattle, said it is possible that their individual philanthropy will expand now because there are two wealthy families instead of one.

She added that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is not an ordinary family charity;

But it is the largest of its kind on the planet, employing more than 1,600 people around the world, has a $ 50 billion endowment fund, and has already distributed more than $ 50 billion since its launch, to address issues such as vaccine development and women's empowerment.

It competes with the major countries in its support work, as it contributes more resources related to research and development work to combat diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and others.

The giant corporation also has ties to Wall Street.

The ETF distributes tens of millions of dollars in fees each year to investment business managers and financial services firms.

Any change in the participation of Bill or Melinda in the foundation is expected to have a significant impact due to the extraordinary size of its board of directors, according to Alexander.

Bill and Melinda make up two-thirds of the foundation's trustees.

The third member is their friend, prominent investor Warren Buffett, who has added more than $ 27 billion of his funds to the foundation's coffers over the past 15 years.

Dale and Greg Witkowski, a senior lecturer in nonprofit management at Columbia University, both agree that the separation will not affect the institution or grants already pledged, immediately, but may affect its future, depending on how Bell's approach evolves. And Melinda is in charity work after the break-up.

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