# E-mail scam offers "grant give-away" from Gates Foundation

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2004/01/19/email-scam-offers-quotgrant-giveawayquot-gates-foundation/
- Published: 2004-01-19T00:00:00+00:00
- Author: Howard Lake

An e-mail message purportedly from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is asking
charities in the UK and Europe to sign up to receive grants from its new unpublicised‘
Direct Impact Grant Program’. It’s a scam of course, so do not respond to it.
“We
at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation wish to bring to the notice of selected NGOs 
and highly placed individuals worldwide our resolve and new program put in place
to foster our activities and positively impact human lives at various levels.”

Ah, the joys of being offered funding from one of the world’s largest grant-making
trusts. And the pleasure of being addressed as “Dear contact.” Even better, those
nice people at the Foundation used a Hotmail.com address from which to send this
offer.

It is of course a scam, and that has been confirmed by staff at the genuine Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation. It’s not clear what the hoaxers plan to gain from 
these detailed and uncommonly well crafted (for a spam e-mail) message: they don’t
ask for bank account details. Perhaps they are just out to cause trouble and waste
staff time.

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The best approach is simply to ignore it and delete it.

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