Many people seem to believe that “inheriting” e.g. The Gates Foundation is just as profitable as inheriting tens of billions in cash. My gut tells me that charitable law must be more complicated than that. What’s the truth?
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The whole point of a charitable foundation is for a rich person to separate a chunk of their wealth and say “this is for charity.” As such, *they* no longer really own it, and it certainly does not pass automatically to their children. Aside from the tax benefits, this lack of inheritance is sometimes desirable for the person making the charitable endowment. They want a broader legacy than providing money for their children, and they don’t want those children (or their grandchildren or great-grandchildren, etc.) diverting that legacy to more spending.
So in the case of the Gates Foundation, Bill Gates has a leadership position (though he’s not an active executive like the CEO), but it’s unlikely that any of his children will “inherit” that leadership position by default. Even if they did, the legal documents establishing the charity would maybe let them redirect the money to different charitable causes, but they would have no power to ransack it for personal gain. The Gates Foundation in particular is set to “self-destruct” by spending all its money within 20 years of the deaths of its founders, so keeping it going as a cash cow would be even harder.
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