It could be a statement, or it could be a story. The statement is simple: the Gates Foundation is giving the University of Washington a record $540 million. The story, however, is much deeper and far more interesting than that financial statement. The University of Washington is not Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’s alma mater, but it may as well be his family’s university. His father, Bill Gates Sr., his mother, Mary Maxwell Gates, and his sisters Kristi and Libby all attended UW.
But beyond the family connection, or simply being located in his home state, the university also played an unexpected role in giving Gates his early connection to computers. In the early 1970s, while still in high school, Gates landed a $500 contract to help computerize the university’s class-enrollment system with help from his older sister Kristi, who was then involved in UW student government. In today’s money, that is roughly $4,000, and at the time it was enough to cover more than four months of typical rent in Washington state.
But this was evidently about far more than money. Four UW faculty members had founded Computer Center Corporation, better known as C-Cubed, and allowed Gates, then just 13, and Paul Allen free time on a PDP-10 computer in return for finding bugs in the system. Gates took full advantage of the opportunity. He later recalled waiting until his parents were asleep, leaving home and making his way to UW’s Physics building around 3 a.m. so he could use another PDP-10 during the few hours it sat idle.
Fast-forward more than half a century and the relationship has come full circle. The same university that once paid a teenage Gates $500 is now receiving $540 million from his foundation. What started as a small job for a computer-obsessed teenager has turned into a grant more than one million times larger.
The $540 million commitment is the largest grant in the University of Washington’s history. Spread over 10 years, the money will go to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), an independent research unit at UW. IHME will use the record funding to expand its Global Burden of Disease study, the world’s largest systematic effort to measure deaths, illnesses, disabilities, injuries and health risks, Forbes reported. IHME currently provides health estimates for roughly 925 locations around the world. Gates’s latest commitment will help push that number to nearly 5,000. The funding will also expand IHME’s tracking of health financing across 204 countries. It means simply writing checks and pouring money into global health is never enough. Knowing whether those billions are actually reaching the populations, diseases and places that need them the most is just as important. That is where IHME comes in.
“Reliable and independent evidence can mean the difference between reacting to a health crisis after it has taken hold and acting early enough to change its course,” said Dr. Christopher J.L. Murray, IHME director. He added, “This investment will allow us to provide high-quality evidence at a much more local level and help leaders understand not only where health is improving or worsening, but which decisions can make the greatest difference for people.” And this isn’t even Gates’s first big check to the University of Washington. Over a period of 35 years, he and his foundation have only strengthened their relationship with UW, breaking one giving record after another along the way.
In 1991, Gates personally gave UW $12 million to establish its Department of Molecular Biotechnology. At the time, it was described as the largest single commitment from an individual in the university’s history. Sixteen years later, the Gates Foundation entered the picture in a much bigger way. In 2007, it committed $105 million to help establish IHME, alongside another $20 million from UW itself. A decade later, in 2017, the foundation announced another $279 million over 10 years for the institute. Now, the largest gift yet, $540 million, is set to change the course once again. And perhaps Gates himself best explains why he keeps returning to UW, “We rely on the UW to get the blunt truth
.”