Giving Compass' Take:

• The Gates Foundation announced plans to spend $158 million over four years fighting poverty in the United States. This money will work alongside the foundation's commitment to education in the U.S. 

• Is the current plan comprehensive? Can the education funding and poverty funding work together through mechanisms like community schools to provide holistic services? 

• Learn about the Gates Foundation's plan for public schools. 

On May 3rd, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation formally launched its work on mobility from poverty in the United States. The announcement is an answer to the highly anticipated question of whether the largest foundation in the world will fight poverty at home as well as abroad.

The Gates Foundation is committing $158 million over four years to develop new strategies, improve coordination, and mobilize additional resources.

The Gates Foundation spends $4 billion a year internationally. While nearly all of the $500 million that goes in to U.S. programs focuses on education, the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line increased from 12.7 to 14.2 percent between 2010 and 2016, and wealth inequality is on the rise in the U.S. Roughly 43 percent of children who are born into the bottom income quintile in America will still be there as adults.

While education will remain the Gates Foundation’s primary focus in the U.S, this move acknowledges that it is not the only intervention needed. Given the scope, along with the cost and complexity of solving poverty, the Gates Foundation wants to play two catalytic roles: Investing in public goods and creating an enabling environment for stakeholders, CEO Sue Desmond-Hellmann said.

The US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty convened 24 experts, who spent two years identifying solutions to boost upward mobility in America. They came up with five mutually reinforcing strategies to move Americans out of poverty: Changing the narrative around poverty; creating access to jobs; ensuring that zip code is not destiny; providing support that empowers; and transforming data systems to increase accountability and transparency.

Read the full article about the Gates Foundation U.S. poverty plan by Catherine Cheney at Devex International Development.