Fortune
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Just Donated to This Tech Non-Profit
By: Jonathan Vanian
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is doubling down on improving computer science education.
The private foundation, formed in 2000 by the former Microsoft (MSFT, +0.52%) CEO and his wife, has contributed an unspecified amount of a $12 million donation to the non-profit Code.org. PricewaterhouseCoopers and the non-profit foundation arm of Indian IT company Infosys also donated, Code.org said on Monday.
Code.org focused on making computer science education more available in schools and to people from underrepresented communities. In addition, it is involved in trying to get more girls interested in computer science.
The Code.org non-profit also said Monday that it reached a milestone of signing up 10 million girls to use its several online courses intended to teach them software development skills.
In October, Bill Gates said his foundation would invest $1.7 billion in U.S. public education, with the funds intended to explore new teaching techniques.
“The role of philanthropy here is not to be the primary funder, but rather to fund pilots, to fund new ideas, to let people — it’s always the educators coming up with the ideas — to let them try them out and see what really works super well and get those to scale,” Gates reportedly said at the time.
