Five Questions for Melinda French Gates

① Critics say philanthropy has been astonishingly ineffective at solving societal problems—that giving has increased, but problems have gotten worse.

I would beg to differ. We know millions of people are alive because of the lifesaving vaccines that have been developed and given around the world. Moms and dads in low-income countries line up to get measles vaccines for their children, because you know what? A measles outbreak in their community means that kids die. Has all of philanthropy been great? No. Philanthropy is only one tool in the toolbox. Philanthropy can take a risk that we wouldn’t want government to take with our taxpayer funding, but it can prove things out at scale, and then governments can come in to scale that up.