[16] On June 15, 2006, Gates announced his plans to transition out of a day-to-day role with Microsoft, effective July 31, 2008,[17] to allow him to devote more time to working with the foundation.

The foundation purchased the property for $50.4 million from the Seattle city government, who would help build a 1,000-stall public parking garage and assist with cleanup of the land, which had been used as a Metro Transit bus base.

[22] The design was awarded LEED Platinum status for its environmentally-friendly features, including a living roof, a rainwater retention pool, and a rooftop solar array.

Bloomberg News noted, "Buffett's gift came with three conditions for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Bill or Melinda Gates must be alive and active in its administration; it must continue to qualify as a charity; and each year it must give away an amount equal to the previous year's Berkshire gift, plus an additional amount equal to 5 percent of net assets.

In the 2006 announcement, it was reiterated that Warren Buffett "... has stipulated that the proceeds from the Berkshire Hathaway shares he still owns at death are to be used for philanthropic purposes within 10 years after his estate has been settled".

[80] As of 31 December 2024[update], according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the trust owned the following investments (almost 200 million shares) worth a total of over $42 billion:[81] Christopher Elias leads the foundation's efforts to combat extreme poverty through grants as president of the Global Development Program.

[82] In March 2006, the foundation announced a $5 million grant for the International Justice Mission (IJM), a human rights organization based in Washington, D.C., US to work in the area of sex trafficking.

[85] The office was opened for three years for the following purposes: "conducting undercover investigations, training law enforcement, rescuing victims, ensuring appropriate aftercare, and seeking perpetrator accountability".

In 2000, the Gates Foundation endowed the scholarship trust with $210 million to help outstanding graduate students outside of the United Kingdom study at the University of Cambridge.

[101] The foundation has since 2005 undertaken a wide range of efforts in the WASH sector involving research, experimentation, reflection, advocacy, and field implementation.

This was because the sanitation sector was generally receiving less attention from other donors and from governments, and because the foundation believed it had the potential to make a real difference through strategic investments.

[103] About one billion people have no sanitation facility whatsoever and continue to defecate in gutters, behind bushes or in open water bodies, with no dignity or privacy.

[108] Both funding schemes explicitly excluded project ideas that relied on centralized sewerage systems or are not compatible with development country contexts.

[111] Since the launch of the "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge", more than a dozen research teams, mainly at universities in the U.S., Europe, India, China, and South Africa, have received grants to develop innovative on-site and off-site waste treatment solutions for the urban poor.

[111][113] High-tech toilets for tackling the growing public health problem of human waste are gaining increasing attention, but this focus on a "technology fix" has also been criticized by many in the sector.

The aim of the "Omni Processor" is to convert excreta (for example fecal sludge) into beneficial products such as energy and soil nutrients with the potential to develop local business and revenue.

[134][135] Since 2011, the president of the Global Health Program is Trevor Mundel:[136] The foundation has donated billions of dollars to help sufferers of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, protecting millions of children from death at the hands of preventable diseases.

In 2020, together with the UK research charity Wellcome and Mastercard, the Gates Foundation established the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator to hasten the development and evaluation of new and repurposed drugs and biologics to treat patients for COVID-19.

[169] In December 2020, the foundation solicited applications for funding for researchers at McMaster University to develop epidemiological models for SARS-CoV-2, as well as COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and non-pharmaceutical interventions.

[173] Under President Allan Golston, the United States Program has made grants such as the following: Up to 2013, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided $71 million to Planned Parenthood and affiliated organizations.

[174] In response to questions about this decision, Gates stated in a June 2014 blog post that "[she], like everyone else, struggle[s] with the issue" and that "the emotional and personal debate about abortion is threatening to get in the way of the lifesaving consensus regarding basic family planning".

The foundation has given grants, installed computers and software, and provided training and technical support in partnership with public libraries nationwide to increase access and knowledge.

[179] One of the foundation's goals is to lower poverty by increasing the number of college graduates in the United States, and the organization has funded "Reimagining Aid Design and Delivery" grants to think tanks and advocacy organizations to produce white papers on ideas for changing the current system of federal financial aid for college students, to increase graduation rates.

[178][183][206][207] Union activists in Chicago have accused Gates Foundation grantee Teach Plus, which was founded by new teachers and advocates against seniority-based layoffs, of "astroturfing".

This "brain drain" adds to the existing doctor shortage and pulls away additional trained staff from children and those suffering from other common killers.

Instead of real social change organisations such as BMGF represent the interests of "highly sophisticated capitalists who know what they want and how best to get it" – the "Global Health Imperialism" agenda is devoted "to expanding worldwide markets and facilitating commerce on behalf of Western capitalism".

[224] Some critics allege that by encouraging the use of mass-produced fertilizers and new seed varieties, AGRA's hidden goal is not to lift small farmers out of poverty, but to control them through dependence on profit-oriented international supply chains.

[225] On September 24, 2019, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave its Goalkeepers Global Goals award to Indian prime minister Narendra Modi.

[229] Critics insisted that Modi, a Hindu nationalist prime minister with allegations of human rights abuse, should not be celebrated by an organization whose mission states that 'every life has equal value and all people deserve healthy lives.

They contend that the Gates Foundation should be embracing anti-poverty and living wage policies rather than pursuing untested and empirically unsupported education reforms.