Bill’s moving onward and away from Microsoft. While he will likely still maintain a level of title, his active duties are most definitely changing focus as he call it quits.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation regularly makes headlines as the largest charitable foundation in the country.

On Thursday, it made headlines again, but for a different reason–Gates’ big announcement that he intends, in 2008, to shift his main focus from his day-to-day duties in the corporate world to his foundation’s philanthropic work.

In some ways, this won’t equal a drastic life change for Gates.
Special coverage: The end of the Gates era

As the Seattle-based foundation’s only two trustees, Gates and his wife Melinda have been deeply entrenched in its workings since it began in 1994–work that has taken Gates from corporate boardrooms to remote African villages to meetings with leaders of global organizations such as the World Health Organization and UNICEF.

In its 12 years of operation, the foundation has donated $10.5 billion in grants, including a 10-year, $750 million dollar grant to the Global Alliance to help fund childhood vaccinations in underdeveloped countries (in 2005, about 70 percent of the foundation’s grants went toward global efforts). (Last year, Forbes magazine estimated Gates’ worth at $51 billion, making him the world’s richest man.)

The foundation donates roughly $1.5 billion each year to four major areas: global health, education, global libraries and the Pacific Northwest. Grants go to other areas, including microfinance, agricultural development, water, sanitation and hygiene…. Source: News.com