Giving: A Conversation Between President Clinton and Bill Gates
Clinton Global Initiative
9/24/08

(Excerpts from the transcripts. Watch the entire discussion linked to the right.)

BILL CLINTON:
Who should do what to build out the health systems in the world? And is there someway that people that are not as big as the Gates Foundation or do not have the access I have to big donors can make a contribution to that? What is your take on that?

BILL GATES: You are absolutely right that those clinics, sometimes called primary healthcare, are the key thing that you need to invest in. You need some drugs there, you need some training, not a full-blown doctor. And most of the difference in improving health conditions will take place if you have an appropriately functioning primary healthcare system.

What we need to do is make it so you can just go to the Internet, pick a country, pick a location and give modest amounts of money to say, get drugs stocked in one of those places or let them hire an additional person to come in and help out. So you can really associate yourself with a particular intervention. And no matter what scale you are working at, feel like you can track that what you are doing makes a very big difference.

BILL CLINTON: I want to emphasize the point that Bill made that is most relevant to all the rest of you, as well as the people that will follow this over the Internet.

One of the most appealing of all the donor portals of the web is Kiva.org because you can get on there and you see people all over the world who need small amounts of microcredit. And so you do not have to set-up a big microcredit bank. Even if you can just afford $25 every three months, you can fund an entrepreneur and then when they pay the money back you keep it or turn around and give it away, give it to someone else. And it has been wildly popular. When I featured them in my book, within 48 hours after I was on television talking about them, all their businesses were funded. It is fascinating and they had to stop taking money until they went out and got some more targets.

The same principle could be done anywhere. So some enterprising person here in this audience or out there in cyberspace who is following this, that is an opportunity that ought to be seized.

The only point that I am making is that Mr. Gates’ former life as a techno wizard has great application here that we have not even begun to fully realize in the NGO field. So he has given me a good idea about this healthcare thing.

BILL GATES: As you said, the Internet is our friend in that and we have to be more creative about it. No matter what the scale of giving is, we can be more connected to the problems and to the positive impact that we are having.

There is so much innovation power and the corporate sector can do things that government can't do and that NGOs can't do. They really know they should.

.....

BILL CLINTON: I’m going to comment about that. I think there are two things. First, you have to have a strict no corruption policy. We can all screw up but [applause] if I give you my money, I’m trying to save your peoples’ lives so what you do in the rest of your business is not my business and this business, it’s got to be straight.

You have to build the capacity and you have to endure the frustrations and you have to take the failures because,” he says, “what happens if my foundation is not here ten years or 20 years or 30 years from now?”

They will be and our obligation, he looked at me and he said, “your obligation and mine is to build their capacity to serve the public on a permanent basis irrespective of the personalities.” I think we have to see ourselves, at least those of us who have any reach at all, as part of our responsibility is to increase capacity. As long as they’ll do whatever we’re doing without corruption then we should focus on capacity.

BILL GATES: Well I’m very pleased that, over the last five years, the visibility of these global health and issues of the poorest have really gone up dramatically. I think Jeffrey Sach’s work on the Millennium Development Goals that we helped support, that’s been great. I think CGI brings together a community and people renew their energy. New people are drawn in. 

I think the telling of the success stories, getting the word out about the malaria, we’ve got people like Peter Churnin and Ray Chambers, who have been drawn into this thing because they see the opportunity and they’re doing great work. Other people see that.
So telling a balanced story, sharing the successes and yet also talking about the failures, it’s always been tough for this field.