RealNetworks founder pledges $1.5 million to fight AIDS

By Associated Press - April 21, 2004

SEATTLE - RealNetworks founder Rob Glaser wants to make venture capital work for the world of philanthropy.

He is donating $1.5 million to help fight AIDS in Rwanda, where genocide ravaged the country a decade ago and as much as 13 percent of the population is HIV-positive.

That's not a whole lot of money - not compared to the need, and not compared to the massive donations regularly dispersed by the $27 billion charitable foundation of Glaser's business rival, Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

But Glaser, who built his Seattle-based company on a base of venture capital, said he believes in the multiplying power of well-timed seed money. While $1.5 million may not be enough to put a dent in the African AIDS problem, Glaser hopes it will be enough to help Rwanda get the big bucks it needs to fight the pandemic.

The money will go to the Access Project, which helps developing countries get and use grants from the United Nations' Global Fund to Fight AIDS.

"I look at how much money it took to start our company - just a few million dollars at the right time," Glaser told The Associated Press in an interview this week. "Early money plays a catalytic role ... I can't think of a single project I'm involved in where the impact and leverage is as great as this one."

Rwandan President Paul Kagame planned to meet with Glaser on Thursday in Seattle for the official announcement.

In 1994, when Glaser was starting RealNetworks, Rwanda endured civil war and genocide. The extremist Hutu government directed the slaughter of more than 500,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus. The actual death toll may have been as high as 1 million. Despite desperate pleas for help, Western governments and the United Nations failed to intervene until it was far too late.

Kagame, a Tutsi, led a rebel army to victory and became president, ending the 100 days of killing.

One of the legacies of Rwandan genocide is AIDS. Hutu militia members used rape as a weapon, spreading AIDS to thousands of women and their children.

Glaser, who's 42, traveled to Rwanda in February to see the problems for himself.

He recalled visiting the Kigali Central Hospital in Rwanda's capital city. About 70 percent of the hospital's patients have AIDS. He noticed the women patients were much sicker and frailer than the men, and learned that is because women are the primary breadwinners in Rwanda, so even when they get sick they will work until they literally drop. The dying women lay two to a bed.

"They're tiny. The average weight of the women I saw in the hospital was about 90 pounds. The wasting from the disease - I had seen it, but never to that extent," Glaser said. "Those are the kinds of experiences and images that resonate very powerfully for me, two months later."

The biggest pot of money for countries such as Rwanda is the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The fund, created by the United Nations in 2001, has promised $2 billion in grants so far. But competition is fierce, and many countries that need the money lack the know-how and infrastructure to get and use the grants. That's where the Access Project enters.

In the past, Glaser's Progress Foundation has given $1.6 million to the Access Project. That money has helped African governments get more than $270 million out of the Global Fund. For example, the Access Project helped Rwanda get a $56 million Global Fund grant to give 20,000 AIDS patients anti-retroviral treatment and to give 50,000 HIV-positive people medicine to prevent life-threatening infections.

Glaser's personal fortune has plunged in the past few years.

RealNetworks stock was trading at $6.48 on Thursday, down from a high of more than $100 a share at the height of the high-tech boom.

But Glaser has continued donating money through his charity, the Glaser Progress Foundation. He said he's concentrating on Rwanda now for three reasons: The country is small enough that his investment can make a difference; its government is committed to fighting AIDS; and Glaser feels a moral imperative to help Rwanda recover from the genocide that, at the time, the world largely ignored.

The scourge of AIDS in Africa, Glaser said, "is another situation where the world is not doing enough. It's not people picking up machetes, it's happening in a much slower way. But it's equally clear, the opportunity to do something about this horrible disease exists."