Warren Buffett donates $50.7 billion towards philanthropy

After 17 years of stey payments, Warren Buffett has to date given annual donations totaling $50.7 billion toward his historic multibillion-dollar pledges to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and to four foundations connected to his family, according to a Chronicle tally. He announced his latest annual payments toward his pledges on Wednesday.

Buffett became biggest donor in history in June 2006, when he pledged 10 million shares of his Berkshire Hathaway Class B stock, n valued at about $36.1 billion, to Gates Foundation, plus 1 million Berkshire shares, n valued at $3.6 billion, to foundation named for his late first wife, Susan Thompson Buffett, and 350,00 shares, n valued at about $1.3 billion apiece, to foundations created by his three children, Susan, Howard, and Peter Buffett.

Combined, those five pledges amounted to more than $43.5 billion at time. In 2010, Buffett and Berkshire's or shareholders approved a stock split, which significantly increased number of shares Buffet has given five foundations in years since.

With se latest payments, he has given Gates Foundation nearly $39.3 billion, Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation almost $4.2 billion, and more than $2.4 billion apiece to Sherwood, Howard G. Buffett, and Novo foundations.

Although he has exceeded his original pledges, a spokeswoman for Buffett told Chronicle that he will continue to make payments to five foundations throughout his lifetime as he promised to do in statements he me announcing pledges in 2006.

When Buffett announced his huge pledge to Gates Foundation, he said he was doing so because he was confident it could make most of money.

I don't think I'm as well cut out to be a philanthropist as Bill and Melinda are, Buffett told Fortune magazine in 2006. What can be more logical, in whatever you want done, than finding someone better equipped than you are to do it?

That thinking was greeted with enthusiastic approval by philanthropy experts in 2006 and remains mired today. philanthropy historian Benjamin Soskis says Buffett's decision to give money to an organization he thought could handle it better than he could was innovative, and he wishes ors would have followed Buffett's le.

If more wealthy donors h embraced that, it really could have h a huge impact on sector because it would have concentrated funding in smaller and smaller fiefdoms, Soskis says. It was a really interesting idea, but not one that has been widely taken up.

Buffett's example remains powerful more than 15 years later, says Phil Buchanan, who les Center for Effective Philanthropy, because it showed rich donors that having tens of billions of dollars does not mean y have to pursue ir philanthropic goals by creating a new foundation that will exist long after y are gone.

He showed folks that re are existing institutions that you can look to, wher foundations, in his case, or any number of different giving vehicles or to nonprofits mselves, Buchanan says. I think that's really healthy and positive.

Buffett structured his Gates Foundation pledge so it would receive 5% of promised shares each year starting in 2006. He stipulated that eir Bill Gates or Melinda French Gates must remain alive and active in policy-setting and ministration of foundation to continue receiving annual disbursements. He also said Gates Foundation must spend value of previous year's gift plus 5% of its net assets each year and that spending excesses could be carried forward and shortfalls me up following year. Buffett joined Gates Foundation board and has me gifts toward his commitment every summer since he announced pledge.

Philanthropy experts say that by making Gates Foundation one of wealthiest grantmakers in world, Buffett's pledge triggered a shifting of power within foundation world: Gates Foundation rose to top of heap, and some legacy grantmakers saw ir power dim. It also placed Gates Foundation under a microscope of public scrutiny.

Buffett turned a large foundation into a colossus and into something that was an order of magnitude much larger than its peers, Soskis says. amount of pressure that put on institution to spend amounts of money that no foundation h ever spent before on a consistent basis as a normal form of operation required a real transformation of foundation and a scaling of its bureaucracy and of its ambition, and so it turned what was alrey an incredibly large foundation into what it's become now, which is, both for critics and for champions, embodiment of large-scale philanthropic funding.

It also intensified existing questions about power dynamics between foundations and grantees, says Buchanan, who thinks that in some ways that has helped to bring about some good changes over time.

That soul searching has led to more calls for different kinds of approaches, more trust-based approaches, Buchanan says. You've seen over years consistent calls for more unrestricted support for organizations and less in way of control by funders of organizational decisions about budget allocation and that kind of thing.

Buffett stepped down from Gates Foundation's board in spring of 2021 shortly after Gateses announced y were divorcing. He did not dress divorce in a statement announcing his resignation but said decision to leave grantmaker's board followed his stepping away from all corporate boards he h been serving on except Berkshire Hathaway.

While historic pledge Buffett me to Gates Foundation dwarfed what he promised to Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and his three children's grantmakers, Buffett was just as intentional in his giving to those entities and has me annual distributions to each since 2006. In a surprise move in 2012, he doubled his original pledges to his children's foundations, saying in a statement that he was impressed with ir grantmaking and that ir charitable work has exceeded (his) high expectations.