The three children of the Oracle of Omaha, already among the nation’s biggest givers, could end up giving away as much as $130 billion of their father’s fortune. Here’s what you need to know about their philanthropy so far.
Wearing a protective vest, cargo pants and a helmet, Howard Buffett, the 69-year-old son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, holds a camera up to his face with one eye closed. To his right, a soldier huddles under tarps draped in a tree that forms a makeshift shelter. A patchy layer of snow covers the ground.
Buffett is in an undisclosed location in the Donetsk Oblast region of eastern Ukraine, taking photos for a book he published earlier this year via his Howard G. Buffett Foundation. Called Courage of a Nation, the 220-page book contains pictures that Buffett–an avid photographer–took in Ukraine during 10 trips to the war-torn country in the first two years after Russia’s invasion in February 2022. His charitable foundation has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to the country, primarily for food security and conflict mitigation. Just last year, it distributed roughly a quarter of a billion dollars to groups operating in Ukraine. And it’s on track to donate another $800 million to those efforts this year, Buffett told Yahoo Finance last month. “In Ukraine, we are currently responding to the humanitarian crisis created by the full-scale invasion by Russia, but we have ideas of the role we can play when the war ends and the hard work of recovery begins,” Buffett wrote in his foundation’s 2023 annual report. “Too often, the world responds in a big way when a new conflict starts, but in my experience, the hardest work begins when a conflict persists, or a country moves from conflict to recovery.”
For years Howard and his siblings, Susie and Peter, have quietly given away their father’s money in a big but very low key way, so much so that few have noted just how much of an impact they’ve made. Between 2001 and 2023, the trio received nearly $7.9 billion in Berkshire Hathaway shares and have given away at least $7.4 billion through their charitable foundations, more than $2.2 billion apiece. The siblings’ lifetime giving would land them on Forbes’ 2024 list of the country’s 25 most generous philanthropists, ahead of Charles Koch and Home Depot cofounder Bernie Marcus. These figures don’t include $8.8 billion in charitable distributions from 2001-2023 by the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named after Warren’s first wife (who died in 2004); the foundation is reportedly the largest private U.S. donor to reproductive health groups and is chaired by their daughter Susie Buffett.
The spotlight is only going to shine brighter on the siblings in the years to come. Last year their 93-year-old father said he was appointing them as future distributors of one of the world’s largest fortunes: nearly $130 billion in Berkshire Hathaway stock, as part of his will. The siblings will oversee a charitable trust that will hold nearly all of Warren Buffett’s assets when he dies, he recently told the Wall Street Journal.
It’s not clear why Buffett chose his three children to give away his fortune upon his death rather than the Gates Foundation, which has more than 2,000 employees and an infrastructure in place that enabled it to distribute nearly $8 billion last year. In 2006, Buffett wrote public letters to Bill and Melinda Gates and to his children, promising to give each of their foundations a portion of his Berkshire Hathaway shares every June, with the bulk of the donation going to the Gates Foundation. At one point in the letter to Bill and Melinda, Buffett referred to it as a “lifetime pledge.” Later in the letter he added, “I will soon write a new will that will provide for a continuance of this commitment – by distribution of the remaining earmarked shares or in some other manner – after my death.”
But in late June this year, Buffett told the Wall Street Journal, “The Gates Foundation has no money coming after my death.” His stated reason for the change was that his children have shown they can handle giving away an enormous amount of money. “They were not fully prepared for this awesome responsibility in 2006, but they are now,” Buffett wrote in a letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders last November, when he first disclosed that his children would be the trustees of a charitable trust that will receive 99%-plus of his wealth.
There have been signs that Buffett has distanced himself from the Gates Foundation since Bill and Melinda announced they were divorcing in May 2021. The following month, Buffett, who was then 90, resigned from the Gates Foundation’s board, where he had served since 2006, publicly declaring, “My goals are 100% in sync with those of the foundation, and my physical participation is in no way needed to achieve these goals.” He also stopped attending the annual Giving Pledge gatherings in recent years, according to Forbes reporting and two people familiar with the event. A spokesperson for the Gates Foundation pointed Forbes to its CEO Mark Suzman’s recent statement to the Wall Street Journal: “Warren Buffett has been exceedingly generous to the Gates Foundation through more than 18 years of contributions and advice.” Peter Buffett as well as a spokesperson for Howard’s foundation declined to comment; a spokesperson for Susie’s foundation did not reply to a request for comment.
While questions remain about what Buffett’s children will do with the funds in the charitable trust, they have already forged their own paths as philanthropists over the past two decades. One thing that sets them apart from other top philanthropists is the very high percentage of grantmaking every year relative to their foundations’ assets. While the Internal Revenue Service requires private foundations to pay out 5% of their assets annually, the payout rates of the Buffett children’s foundations have far exceeded that, ranging from 28% to 94% in recent years. In 2022, Howard’s and Peter’s foundations gave away about half of their net assets, while Susie’s Sherwood Foundation gave away most of its net assets, Forbes calculates, based on the foundations’ tax filings. In contrast, nearly three-quarters of the 90,300 private charitable foundations in the U.S. gave away less than 10% of their net assets in 2022, an analysis by Helen Flannery of the Institute for Policy Studies found.
In fact, most private foundations stick to the 5% payout rate annually to make sure their organizations can be maintained over time, says Amir Pasic, dean of the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. Also, most private foundations don’t receive ongoing annual donations of stock worth hundreds of millions of dollars from one of the ten richest people in the world–who happens to be their father.
In hindsight, it looks like Warren Buffett gently advised his children to give generously on an annual basis. “You can build up resources while you gain experience and develop long range goals. But, since you will be receiving gifts annually, there is no need for you to build large reserves,” he wrote in his pledge letters to his children in 2006.
Because the Buffett childrens’ foundations aren’t holding onto most of the contributions they receive each year, “these organizations are under the radar,” says Brian Mittendorf, an accounting professor at Ohio State University with a focus on nonprofits. “Most people look at the total wealth of a foundation, not at its payout amount.” As of the most recent tax filings, the assets in the Buffett kids’ foundations are each less than $760 million–significant, but not enough to put them on a list of the country’s biggest foundations.
Buffett’s children will need to unanimously decide on how to disburse their fathers assets from the charitable trust they will oversee, per the Wall Street Journal. So far, each of them have staked out rather distinct areas of giving.
Howard Buffett
Charitable distributions by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, 2001-2023: $2.7 billion
Gifts to foundation from Warren Buffett, 2001-2023: $2.7 billion
Most of Howard’s foundation’s support goes to food and agricultural assistance in Ukraine, as well as addressing food insecurity in countries like Rwanda, El Salvador and Guatemala. In Ukraine, where the bulk of the foundation’s grants have gone since 2022, the foundation funds land mine removal efforts to enable farmers to plant their crops; that included a $15 million donation to the land mine-clearing nonprofit HALO Trust last year.
Howard comes across as an adventurer-with-a-cause. In addition to his many trips to Ukraine for his foundation work, he has spent time at a ranch his foundation bought in Arizona near the Mexico border where he delved into learning about human smuggling across the border and researched what crops would grow there. He also worked in Colombia and El Salvador for years to get to the root causes of why so many in Latin America see no option but to migrate to the U.S.
As a lifelong farmer, a prolific writer and photographer, traveling internationally has had an “outsized impact” on his view of the world, he wrote in his foundation’s most recent annual report. “I have always believed in showing up, that you must be on the ground, meet the people, see the environment, and sometimes feel the dirt between your fingers and the smells around you just to start to understand a place and its challenges,” he wrote.
Howard also tapped his foundation for local work in Decatur, Ill., where he lives with his wife, Devon Buffett. The foundation commissioned a police training center in May last year as part of a years-long collaboration with the Police Executive Research Forum, a membership organization for police executives, focusing on reducing the use of force and crime-reduction strategies. He served as a sheriff in Macon County from 2017 to 2018, where Decatur is located, and three years earlier had a stint as the county’s volunteer deputy sheriff.
Some of Howard’s foundation’s biggest grants have gone to organizations that he runs or to which has ties. In 2021, its largest grant–nearly $43.5 million–went to the Center to Combat Human Trafficking in Decatur, Ill., a nonprofit where Howard serves as the (unpaid) president. That same year $25 million went to Decatur-based Fundación Para La Paz Y La Seguridad (Foundation for Peace and Security), which provides “access to markets for smallholder farmers” in Colombia, per a tax filing; Howard Buffett serves as a director of this nonprofit as well. And Howard’s foundation donated $15 million to the Decatur-based Public Safety Training Foundation, where Howard serves as a director. “It’s an odd situation. I don’t typically see an arrangement like this,” says Phil Hackney, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh with a focus on nonprofits. But since Howard isn’t compensated for his roles in those organizations, Hackney says, it doesn’t create legal issues for the IRS, which prohibits “self-dealing” transactions.
Howard, who has been on the board of Berkshire Hathaway since 1993, is expected to be voted in as the company’s non-executive chairman once his father steps down, a decision that Warren told 60 Minutes in 2011 would help preserve the values of the company. “As long as I can keep farming, I’m okay,” Howard said then.
Susie Buffett
Charitable distributions by Sherwood Foundation, 2001-2023: $2.5 billion
Gifts to foundation from Warren Buffett, 2001-2023: $2.6 billion
Susan A. Buffett, the eldest sibling at age 71, runs Omaha-based Sherwood Foundation, which supports the neediest in Nebraska, including the state’s school system. “Here’s the problem: too many children arrive at kindergarten already behind. What’s worse, far too many children keep falling further behind – and never catch up,” Susie, who reportedly taught at inner-city schools in Omaha, wrote on the website of the Buffett Early Childhood Fund, which received $30 million from the Sherwood Foundation in 2023 and supports the first five years of childhood education. (Susie also chairs the Buffett Early Childhood Fund.) In 2023, the foundation made grants to the University of Nebraska Foundation to support programs including a college preparatory academy and a project for vulnerable youth. Other smaller grants went to groups ranging from food banks and conservation foundations to school districts and mental health organizations.
Susie joined the board of Berkshire Hathaway in 2021. As chair of the Susan Thompson Buffett foundation, she’s overseen hundreds of millions of dollars in donations to Planned Parenthood and its affiliates.
Peter Buffett
Charitable distributions by NoVo Foundation, 2001-2022: $2.2 billion
Gifts to foundation from Warren Buffett, 2001-2023: $2.6 billion
Peter Buffett, 66, the youngest of Warren’s three children, dropped out of Stanford and made a career as a musician, first writing 15-second tunes for the then-nascent MTV cable channel and music for commercials. In the late 1980s, when New Age instrumental music was popular, he landed his first record deal for his instrumental music. And he scored the fire dance scene in the Academy Award-winning 1990 movie Dances With Wolves. His interest in Native American culture and music resulted in the theatrical show Spirit -The Seventh Fire, which premiered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. in 2004 to celebrate the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian.
Peter and his wife Jennifer, who live near the Hudson Valley city of Kingston, N.Y., previously directed funding from their NoVo Foundation primarily to empower women and girls and to end violence against them. In May 2020, following a 25% drop in the price of Berkshire Hathaway stock amid the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, Peter indicated in a blog post that every NoVo grant was being re-evaluated and that the foundation was shifting its strategy. “We will no longer be siloed into initiative areas,” he wrote. The foundation reportedly laid off some employees and ended multi-year grants while cutting back on funding for women and girls’ programs, though the largest grants in 2022 went to support women and girls. Now the focus, per the foundation’s website, is on Indigenous communities, growing food, supporting children plus projects in the Hudson Valley. In the city of Kingston, that includes a community center with a low-cost laundromat and a family health center providing affordable health care. Asked about one effort NoVo has funded that stands out, Peter said via email, “The next big thing will be a lot of small things.”
–With reporting by Christopher Helman
This article was originally published on forbes.com and all figures are in USD.
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