Buffett Foundation
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The Buffett Foundation is a charitable organization formed 1964 in
Omaha, Nebraska Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest cit ...
, by investor and industrialist
Warren Buffett Warren Edward Buffett ( ; born August 30, 1930) is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is currently the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is one of the most successful investors in the world and has a net w ...
as a vehicle to manage his charitable giving. It was renamed the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation in honor of his wife, Susan Buffett, who died in 2004. As of 2014, the Buffett Foundation ranked fourth among family foundations by grants paid. It invests heavily in reproductive health and family planning grants across the world, including substantial investments in abortion and contraceptives. According to ''Mother Jones'', the Buffett Foundation is known for its focus on abortion access and for its "secrecy...often appearing under grant acknowledgements only as 'an anonymous donor.'"


Management

Allen Greenberg, the executive director of the foundation, was married from 1983 to 1995 to the Buffetts' daughter, Susie, who is chair. The Buffett Foundation was set up in 1964 but had no director until Greenberg took the job in 1987.


History

Susan Buffett's will bestowed about $2.5 billion on the foundation, to which her husband's further gifts of $315 million have been added.


Giving

The Buffett Foundation does not accept unsolicited requests, preferring instead to seek out worthy recipients on its own. Of the $17.6 million that the Buffett Foundation donated in the fiscal year ended June 30, 1999, nearly $3.8 million went to
Planned Parenthood The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. (PPFA), or simply Planned Parenthood, is a nonprofit organization that provides reproductive health care in the United States and globally. It is a tax-exempt corporation under Internal Reve ...
, among its top contributors. It also involves itself directly at the clinic level. International Projects Assistance Services (IPAS), based in Carrboro, North Carolina, manufactures a handheld suction pump used in developing countries to initiate abortions. The Buffett Foundation has backed IPAS for years. Its 1999 contribution of $2.5 million was part of a five-year, $20 million commitment that will enable IPAS to double its capacity. The foundation provides grants to a large range of U.S. and a few international organizations, including the Willows Foundation in Turkey (€2.3 million), the
World Food Programme The World Food Programme; it, Programma alimentare mondiale; es, Programa Mundial de Alimentos; ar, برنامج الأغذية العالمي, translit=barnamaj al'aghdhiat alealami; russian: Всемирная продовольствен ...
in Italy (€800,000),
Marie Stopes International MSI Reproductive Choices, named Marie Stopes International until November 2020, is an international non-governmental organisation providing contraception and safe abortion services in 37 countries around the world. MSI Reproductive Choices as an ...
in the UK (€571,000); and Grupo de Informacion en Reproduccion Elegida in Mexico (€196,000). By 2008, the Foundation had nearly $4 billion in assets. In 2007, Omaha's Building Bright Futures initiative promised financial support to low-income students in the area who wanted to attend college.


Abortion funding

In the 1990s, the Buffett Foundation helped finance the development of the abortion drug
RU-486 Mifepristone, also known as RU-486, is a medication typically used in combination with misoprostol to bring about a medical abortion during pregnancy and manage early miscarriage. This combination is 97% effective during the first 63 days of p ...
. Between 2001 and 2014, the foundation contributed over $1.5 billion to abortion related causes, including at least $427 million to
Planned Parenthood The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. (PPFA), or simply Planned Parenthood, is a nonprofit organization that provides reproductive health care in the United States and globally. It is a tax-exempt corporation under Internal Reve ...
and $168 million to the
National Abortion Federation The National Abortion Federation (NAF) is the professional association of abortion providers. NAF members include private and non-profit clinics, Planned Parenthood affiliates, women's health centers, physicians' offices, and hospitals who together ...
. It has also funded the
Guttmacher Institute The Guttmacher Institute is a research and policy NGO that aims to improve sexual and reproductive health and rights worldwide. This research organization was started in 1968 and works to study, educate, and advance sexual and reproductive health ...
, which tracks demographic and legislative trends, and Gynuity Health Projects, which focuses on
medication abortion A medical abortion, also known as medication abortion, occurs when drugs (medication) are used to bring about an abortion. Medical abortions are an alternative to surgical abortions such as vacuum aspiration or dilation and curettage. Medical ...
.


Gates Foundation

Warren Buffett's intention was originally to leave 99% of his estate to the Buffett Foundation, but in June 2006 he announced that he would give 85% of his wealth to the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), a merging of the William H. Gates Foundation and the Gates Learning Foundation, is an American private foundation founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was l ...
instead. Buffett stated that he changed his mind because he has grown to admire Gates's foundation over the years; he believed that the Gates Foundation would be able to use his money effectively because it was already scaled-up.
Fortune Fortune may refer to: General * Fortuna or Fortune, the Roman goddess of luck * Luck * Wealth * Fortune, a prediction made in fortune-telling * Fortune, in a fortune cookie Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''The Fortune'' (1931 film) ...

A conversation with Warren Buffett.
June 25, 2006.
"Susan's Foundation" is to receive a bequest of about $3 billion over a span of many years.


Source of wealth

The vast bulk of Buffett's wealth consists of his personal holdings in
Berkshire Hathaway Berkshire Hathaway Inc. () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Its main business and source of capital is insurance, from ...
, a conglomerate of which he controls almost 40% directly, and which he has managed personally since the mid-1960s. Giving away such a large part of his company holding could prove problematic in that much of the business of Berkshire Hathaway consists of stock-issuing
insurance Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge ...
companies, such as
GEICO The Government Employees Insurance Company (GEICO ) is a private American auto insurance company with headquarters in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It is the second largest auto insurer in the United States, after State Farm. GEICO is a wholly owne ...
and
General Re General Reinsurance Corporation is an American multinational property/casualty and life/health reinsurance company offering a range of reinsurance products and services. The company is a primarily direct reinsurer and is represented in all major ...
. In the past, many state insurance regulators have had serious concerns about allowing for-profit insurance companies – as opposed to
mutual insurance A mutual insurance company is an insurance company owned entirely by its policyholders. Any profits earned by a mutual insurance company are either retained within the company or rebated to policyholders in the form of dividend distributions or re ...
companies – to be ultimately controlled by non-profit entities. In a famous case regarding this, the
MacArthur Foundation The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants and impact investments to support non-profit organizations in approximately 50 countries around the world. It has an endowment of $7.0 billion and p ...
was forced to divest itself of Bankers Life and Accident.


Notes


External links

* {{Authority control Buffett family Medical and health foundations in the United States Berkshire Hathaway