E-mail scam offers "grant give-away" from Gates Foundation
Howard Lake | 19 January 2004 | News
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.
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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.
The best approach is simply to ignore it and delete it.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.