Buffett Gives $1.3 Billion in Annual Thanksgiving Donation

In what has become an annual Thanksgiving tradition, Warren Buffett is giving huge gifts to his family foundation and the foundations of his three children. On Monday, Buffett announced he is donating stock valued at more than $1.3 billion to the grant makers.

The billionaire investor said in a news release that he gave 1.5 million shares of Berkshire Hathaway Class B stock to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named for his late first wife, and 400,000 shares apiece to the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, and the NoVo Foundation, his children’s grant makers. Those transfers of stock mean the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation received nearly $747 million, while his children’s foundations got nearly $200 million each.

The legendary financier, who will step down from leading Berkshire Hathaway at the end of the year, said in a news release that he feels lucky to have reached the age of 95 but acknowledged he won’t live forever and with that in mind has been making an effort in recent years to increase his gifts to his family foundations.

“My children are all above normal retirement age, having reached 72, 70, and 67. It would be a mistake to wager that all three — now at their peak in many respects — will enjoy my exceptional luck in delayed aging,” Buffett said in the release. “To improve the probability that they will dispose of what will essentially be my entire estate before alternate trustees replace them, I need to step up the pace of lifetime gifts to their three foundations.”

Buffett’s children — Susan, Howard, and Peter — are the executors of his will and the trustees of the charitable trust to which he plans to give the bulk of his fortune when he dies. Last year, he chose three successor trustees to step in should any of his children die. He has not disclosed the successor trustees but called them “exceptional humans and wise in the ways of the world.”

Biggest U.S. Donor in History

He has been giving these Thanksgiving gifts to his family’s foundations since 2022. Last November, Buffet gave stock valued at nearly $1.2 billion to the four foundations, and in 2023 he gave them $866.4 million. Those gifts are in addition to annual payments he makes to the four foundations and to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to fulfill the historic multibillion dollar pledges he made in 2006.

Buffett became the biggest U.S. donor in history that year when he pledged $43.5 billion in Berkshire Hathaway shares to the Gates Foundation, the foundation named for his late wife, and to his three children’s grant makers. In 2010, Buffett and Berkshire’s other shareholders approved a stock split, which has since significantly increased the number of shares Buffett has given the five foundations.

With Monday’s donations, the “Oracle of Omaha” has given over the past 19 years a total of nearly $65.3 billion to those foundations.

Currently, Buffett’s net worth stands at roughly $150 billion, according to Forbes. He has said his charitable trust will spend down the money in the decade or so after his death.

He said in his latest announcement that he doesn’t expect his children to solve all the world’s problems with their grant making.

“I have assured my children that they do not need to perform miracles nor fear failures or disappointments. These are inevitable, and I have made my share,” Buffett said. “They simply need to improve somewhat upon what generally is achieved by government activities and/or private philanthropy, recognizing these other methods of redistribution of wealth have shortcomings as well.”