Buffett accelerates $6B giving plan, drops Gates Foundation from list
At that time, Buffett promised annual gifts of Berkshire B shares for as long as either Bill Gates or Melinda French Gates remained alive and active in setting the charity’s policy and running its operations.
Based on the reduction schedule Buffett laid out then, CNBC’s calculations show the foundation would have been due to receive shares worth close to $4.5 billion this cycle and it shows that over the nearly 20 years the arrangement ran, Buffett’s donations to the Gates Foundation totaled close to $48 billion by the value of the shares at the time they were given, and now carry a current value of about $159 billion, although most of the stock has since been sold off by the foundation to fund its programs.
The Gates Foundation said in a statement published by the BBC:
“The Gates Foundation is grateful to Warren Buffett for his decades of support for our work. His gifts, totaling more than $47 billion, have helped us expand and deliver on the foundation’s mission to improve health and opportunity for people around the world. The foundation continues from a position of financial strength to advance our work through 2045, supported by Bill’s $200 billion commitment.”
Buffett stepped down as a trustee of the foundation in 2021, two months after Bill and Melinda Gates announced their divorce, ending a 27-year marriage and in 2024 Buffett told the Wall Street Journal that the Gates Foundation would receive nothing from his estate, after revising his will to make his three children trustees of a charitable trust holding the vast majority of his fortune.
