SEATTLE – The world’s richest charity doesn’t spend a penny on fundraising. It doesn’t have to. Forty-five donations totaling $108,000 just showed up in the mail at the Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation during the past seven months. Oops, that’s 46 donations totaling more than $1.76 billion, if you count the money from Warren Buffett.

The Gates Foundation obviously doesn’t need the $35 and $100 checks from grandmothers and school children who admire the work they are doing.

So why did the foundation – with a $33.4 billion endowment and more than a billion more each year from investment king Buffett – change its policy and start accepting donations from the public?

Foundation spokeswoman Mary Lockhart says it’s about fairness.

“We just did this because we wanted to be responsive to people who are reaching out to us,” Lockhart said.

She said Bill and Melinda decided it wasn’t right to say yes to Buffett and no to everyone else who wants to support the work of the foundation.

Donation inquiries started flowing in after Buffett’s announcement last summer that he would give most of his fortune away to five foundations, with the bulk of the money going to the Gates Foundation. In July, Buffett transferred his second annual gift. This year’s stock transfer was valued at $1.76 billion.

The organization still follows its old policy of first encouraging potential donors to give their money to the organizations the foundation supports. Before this year, it mailed unsolicited donations back to the givers.

“We really want people to take a look at our grantees and we don’t want to undermine the fundraising efforts of other nonprofits,” Lockhart said in an interview last week. “Based on the comments and amounts we are getting, we don’t think we are doing that.”

The administrative costs of accepting these small gifts – sending thank you notes, keeping track for the IRS and answering questions from the media – may cost the Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation more than the income from these donations, although the staff of the Seattle-based foundation hasn’t done a cost-benefit analysis.

Between the end of December 2006 and the end of July 2007, the Gates Foundation accepted $108,000 in donations from 45 donors – mostly in checks of $35 to $100 with a few for $1,000, one for $1 and one bequest for $70,000 from an Oregon man.

The donations come from all over the country and a few are from overseas. Lockhart said all the money is being added to the foundation’s general fund and is being passed along to the organizations the foundation supports.

Lockhart would not give out any names or contact information for its donors, but she did share some quotes from the letters they have received along with the checks.

“We’re no Mr. Buffett but we want to help!” wrote one donor, who sent $300.

“Please accept this donation on behalf of my 5th grade students. Continue to do all of your marvelous deeds!” wrote a teacher who sent a check for $100.

The foundation, which does not have a fundraising department, has no plans to begin soliciting donations or even thanking donors in the way other nonprofits do with coffee mugs or gala affairs. Lockhart said the Gates Foundation doesn’t even have branded coffee mugs.