Bill Gates' Connections with United Way and Community Foundation

It's interesting to find out that Bill Gates, besides establishing and running his own Foundation, also has ties with United Way campaigns and with the community foundation movement. You can learn more about his past encounters with philanthropy and his thought towards it from his speech delivered in a ceremony organized by the Community Foundation of Silicon Valley - one of the fastest growing community foundations in the States - on October 1, 2004.

I thought I'd share with you this afternoon a little bit of the history of my involvement with philanthropy and some of the lessons about how I think more philanthropy at the corporate level and the personal level is both something that we should strive for and something that is needed.

I grew up in a family that was very involved in the community. My mother and father both had a chance to head the local United Way campaign, and I remember my mom coming and talking about some of the tough decisions that she faced when she ran the allocation committee, looking at the different charities, trying to understand what the needs in the community were, who was spending the money wisely, what needs would not be met and it was amazing to me the range of people, you could say entrepreneurial people who had created nonprofits to meet those needs and how they were using very limited resources to do neat things...