June 4, 2009 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation needs to communicate better with its thousands of grant recipients and is making efforts to be more responsive to them, said Jeff Raikes, the organization’s chief executive.
In an interview about the foundation’s recently released annual report, Mr. Raikes said he wants to create a “culture of listening” within the grant-making organization. To that end, the foundation this fall will survey all its current grantees with the assistance of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, a research organization in Cambridge, Mass.
Gates has previously surveyed its beneficiaries within specific grant-making programs, but the new effort will be the first time the foundation has tried to reach all its charity partners at one time.
“They have to have the opportunity to give us feedback,” Mr. Raikes said.
The foundation leader said the organization needs to do a better job of explaining to grant recipients what Gates’s strategy is, how they fit into that strategy, and who the “point person” is for them to contact if they have problems.
‘Clear Some Hurdles’
In a related effort, Mr. Raikes, who joined the foundation last year, said the Gates foundation also is trying to smooth its internal operations.
The foundation surveyed its employees this year for the first time — an idea that Mr. Raikes said he brought from his previous job as a Microsoft executive
The survey showed that while staff members are proud of what the group stands for, “our staff also told us that it can be hard to get things done at the foundation,” Mr. Raikes writes in the annual report. “We need to clear some hurdles so we can all focus our energy on the people we aim to help.”
The foundation hasn’t become “bureaucratic,” Mr. Raikes told The Chronicle, but it is still adjusting to the rapid growth in the number of employees since 2006, when the financier Warren E. Buffett pledged around $30-billion to the group.
Currently the foundation has more than 750 staff members, almost double from three years ago. Gates plans to continue hiring, but Mr. Raikes said the rate would slow because of the economic downturn’s effect on the foundation.
$9-Billion Drop
The annual report shows that the organization’s assets declined $9-billion in 2008, a 20 percent drop, to $29.9-billion. Volatility in the stock market has continued to erode the endowment; as of the end of March, the foundation’s trust had $27.5-billion.
Despite the losses, Mr. Raikes said the foundation still plans to increase its giving this year by about 10 percent, spending about $3.5-billion on charitable efforts. He said it was too early to say whether that growth in giving would continue in 2010.
“Given what we see today [in the financial markets], we’re still trying to figure that out,” he said.
