I assume you mean by dollar amount of personal fortune they’ve contributed because I can certainly think of quite a few philanthropists who have sacrificed more by percentage of wealth, time, or given their lives to support worthy causes.
This is by no means a dig at the Gates whom I admire greatly.
It’s hard to say if a foundation such as theirs can survive their loss. As much as they might clearly define the mission future leaders could still deviate from the founding principles like we’ve seen with many charitable organizations. There are no guarantees.
It's nearly impossible for a foundation like Gates to survive a loss of visionary leadership.
If it were handed to me with no checks-and-balances, and I were given absolute control, I'm pretty sure I could run Gates Foundation as well as Gates. That's not a statement about me; I know a few people who could run it BETTER than myself or Gates. The problem is finding them and the no checks-and-balances bit.
Beyond a founder/donor, no checks-and-balances is a really bad way to run an organization because although MANY people would do a great job, MOST people wouldn't. A good dictatorship beats a good democracy, but a typical democracy beats a typical dictatorship.
The sorts of arbitrary decisions "Let's dump a billion dollars into making a vaccine for COVID19 economical" become impossible once the founder of a foundation goes away, unless you are willing to accept that whomever comes into control might just as well say "Let's dump a billion dollars into buying paintings of myself at 10x markup." You move into competitive processes.
Competitive processes mean people apply for grants under standard criteria.
If grants have a strongly positive ROI, you have more people applying to the program, and if a negative ROI, fewer people. This means grant-funded organizations will spend a significant portion of their time applying for grants; grants become thin-margin beasts.
And the people who do run late foundations? They're connected people good at climbing corporate ladders.
This is by no means a dig at the Gates whom I admire greatly.
It’s hard to say if a foundation such as theirs can survive their loss. As much as they might clearly define the mission future leaders could still deviate from the founding principles like we’ve seen with many charitable organizations. There are no guarantees.