Where Will Warren Buffett’s Billions Go? 6 Questions We're Asking About the Future of His Fortune

Warren Buffett. Kent Sievers/shutterstock

Now 91, Warren Buffett has long projected a certain robustness, but no one lives forever. What’ll happen to his $100 billion fortune upon his death has been the subject of mostly muted speculation since 2006, when Buffett wrote a letter to Bill and Melinda Gates pledging the majority of it to their then quite new foundation.

Buffett has endeavored to make good on that commitment. He’s moved massive annual tranches of Berkshire Hathaway stock to the Gates Foundation, helping propel that organization to the pinnacle of global philanthropic prominence. He has also made large annual disbursements of stock to each of the four foundations run by his three children.

Next to Buffett’s Gates pledge, the story of the Buffett family’s giving doesn’t get enough attention — these philanthropic power players fly below the radar relative to their sheer grantmaking heft. Their foundations are already on track to receive billions when the Oracle of Omaha passes, on top of the billions he’s already provided them. And recent reporting from the Wall Street Journal, unconfirmed by Buffett himself, has suggested that the family philanthropies might end up getting the bulk of Buffett’s fortune instead of Gates.

However accurate or inaccurate those reports, the philanthrosphere may be in for a wild ride when Buffett’s postmortem intentions do become clear. In the meantime, here are six questions we’re asking about what might happen to Buffett’s $100 billion hoard.

Will Buffett follow through on his pledge to the Gates Foundation?

Ever since he “irrevocably” committed to making annual stock gifts to the Gates Foundation in 2006, philanthropy watchers have mostly treated it as a given that most of Buffett’s ballooning fortune would make it into that institution’s hands.

At the time, Buffett was worth about $44 billion, and the pledge meant that the Gates Foundation would receive about $31 billion. The Gates commitment made up the bulk of a larger pledge by Buffett to move 85% of his fortune to philanthropy, a figure he later bumped up to 99% when he co-founded the Giving Pledge with Gates in 2010.

Fast forward to today, and the steady climb of Berkshire’s price over the years has fueled total contributions to the Gates Foundation amounting to $35.7 billion since 2006. Bill Gates recently put the real figure closer to $45 billion, taking into account stock appreciation after the gifts were made. The Wall Street Journal has estimated that, under the current understanding, another $56 billion is earmarked for Gates — although if Berkshire continues performing as it has, that amount could swell even further.

But here’s the thing: Buffett may not need to follow through on that full amount. The question of whether the old pledge is legally enforceable is all rather murky, with some estate law experts arguing it may not be. But even if it is, would the Gateses actually take the Buffett estate to court? Highly, highly unlikely. 

Buffett has remained characteristically mum on the matter. As for Bill Gates, he’s said that he doesn’t take Buffett’s generosity for granted, though he also doesn’t have reason to believe the understanding between them has changed.

For that matter, should Buffett follow through?

Philanthropy isn’t the same thing as business, and we’ve been heartened to see fewer grantmakers attempting to graft private-sector practices onto the nonprofit world than was common a decade or so ago. That said, it’s still striking how much Warren Buffett’s philanthropic strategy differs from his business strategy.

At Berkshire, Buffett has long been a champion of diversification. The company’s holdings include everything from insurance to railways, ice cream to underwear — and that means only the widest-ranging of economic shocks can seriously damage it. In his giving, though, Buffett is famous for doing the exact opposite: betting nearly everything on one organization.

As early as 2014, IP editor David Callahan was arguing that the sheen had come off the Gates Foundation and that Buffett should “divest.” It’s been quite a while since then, and the Gates Foundation is bigger than ever, its coffers bulging with new giga-donations from a founder whose fortune has grown at pace with Buffett’s. The Gates Foundation will have enough on its plate spending down the fortune of one of the world’s richest men. Does it really need the fortune of another?

If Buffett changes course, how will the money be split?

The Wall Street Journal’s recent report raised the tantalizing though unverified prospect that, rather than to Gates, the bulk of Buffett’s fortune would go to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation. Named after Buffett’s late first wife, STBF is a quiet behemoth in the reproductive health space, moving billions over the years to a vast array of service providers and advocacy groups, including for abortion care.

STBF has long been helmed by Buffett’s daughter Susie Buffett, who also controls another of the family’s four grantmaking vehicles, the Nebraska-focused Sherwood Foundation. Meanwhile, Buffett’s two sons, Howard and Peter, have channeled large quantities of their father’s money through the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the NoVo Foundation. Annual infusions of Berkshire stock — as with the Gates Foundation — have powered giving that puts each of these grantmakers among the nation’s largest in their own right. In recent years, their combined annual outlay has easily surpassed $1 billion.

Around $17 billion of Buffett’s current fortune has already been earmarked for the four family foundations. In almost any other context, that princely sum would attract a lot of attention. But the Buffett fortune is so staggering that the family foundations are often treated as a footnote next to his pledge to Gates. That’s already an oversight. And unlike in 2006, when they were just putting their toes in the water, the younger Buffetts have been practicing philanthropists for many years now, capable of overseeing even larger giving. Their father appears to agree: As recently as last year, Warren Buffett expressed “delight” with their philanthropic efforts.

Will the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation raise its profile?

Even if it doesn’t get the lion’s share of Buffett’s pile, the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation will likely need to ramp things up even further when he passes. As we’ll get to below, the reason is simple: Warren Buffett doesn’t believe in perpetuity and wants his fortune spent down within a decade of his death.

Abortion opponents are already sounding the alarm about a beefed-up STBF. The magnitude of its giving for reproductive health and rights is striking, with nearly a half-billion moving out the door in a recent year. But because its core work is such a political hot button, the foundation keeps a low profile.

People working in the repro rights space certainly know about it, and so do conservative activists, who’ve tried with limited success to paint the Oracle of Omaha as a culture war villain. Seeing as the foundation’s a 501(c)(3) philanthropy, it’s all there in the 990s.

However, STBF’s website only displays information about its scholarship funding, which makes up a small fraction of its yearly outlay. Not talking to the press about STBF’s core work is the norm for pretty much everyone affiliated with the foundation. And when reproductive health nonprofits receive an STBF grant, they’re often encouraged or obliged to keep mum about where they got the money.

While it’s unlikely STBF will ever become as vociferous as, say, a Ford or an OSF, there’s a case for more volume. As social work Professor Gretchen Ely argued in our deep dive into STBF two years ago, the foundation has “the opportunity to take a real leadership role in destigmatizing support for abortion and reproductive healthcare, which could lead to more philanthropy in this area from others who look to [them] as philanthropic leaders.”

In the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson, reproductive health providers and advocates need robust funding now. Meanwhile, STBF’s long record of abortion care funding hasn’t done much at all to tarnish Warren’s reputation as a capitalist icon and down-home Nebraskan. And any organization with the Buffett name attached should have more than enough resources to protect itself from any threats that could arise from more publicity.

The NoVo Foundation ramped down. Will it ramp up?

The NoVo Foundation is the grantmaking vehicle of Peter Buffett and his wife Jennifer. Buffett is a musician by trade who also gained some attention back in 2013 for penning a withering critique of the “charitable-industrial complex.” Although his grantmaking through NoVo didn’t exactly live up to the intensity of that critique, it’s been an important progressive funder — the rights of women and girls around the world were a key focus, as was taking on gender-based violence.

I say “was” because as of mid-2020, NoVo’s been in a bit of a limbo state. In a decision that left many grantees “heartbroken and stunned” at the time, NoVo backed out of multiyear funding and let large numbers of staff go, effectively spelling an end to much of its previous grantmaking. Since then, NoVo’s transition has seen it retreat to community projects in Kingston, New York, where Peter and Jennifer Buffett live.

While those projects may be admirable and ambitious as far as local funding goes, NoVo’s is the main hiccup in an otherwise uniform narrative of expanding Buffett family giving. If Peter Buffett’s organization does receive an even more substantial sum from his father’s estate, will he be able to move the money out the door? And is a return to NoVo’s previous women’s rights grantmaking in the cards? Or is this Buffett scion — unlike his relatives — so weary of the charitable-industrial complex that agricultural projects in upstate New York are preferable?

Will a 10-year spend-down of Buffett’s fortune achieve lasting change?

Now seems like a good place to mention why the four Buffett family foundations — and Gates, for that matter — have already given away so much of Warren’s money. He famously doesn’t believe in perpetuity. In his Giving Pledge letter, Buffett wrote, “At the latest, the proceeds from all of my Berkshire shares will be expended for philanthropic purposes by 10 years after my estate is settled. Nothing will go to endowments; I want the money spent on current needs.”

The four family foundations haven’t always spent all of Buffett’s contributions immediately as they come in. But they’ve certainly stayed true to Buffett’s intentions by moving far more money than the 5% annual minimum, and that means they haven’t built up the multibillion-dollar endowments we’d otherwise expect at institutions getting hundreds of millions a year since 2006.

Buffett’s anti-perpetuity rule holds for his Gates commitments, as well. In his original pledge, one stipulation was that the foundation’s annual grantmaking surpass the value of his previous year’s contribution by no less than 5%, essentially guaranteeing that Gates spend down the Buffett money as it comes in, plus the regular foundation minimum.

Assuming Buffett’s successors adhere to his wishes, a 10-year spend-down will involve some truly colossal grantmaking. In dollar terms, it would exceed MacKenzie Scott’s groundbreaking efforts to empty the safe and further entrench a spend-down trend that’s been gaining steam lately.

The big question is this: Is Warren Buffett right to prioritize “current needs” above all? If STBF spends down, who will step in to support the reproductive health providers it’s currently helping sustain in a post-Roe nation? What about long-term, patient advocacy and infrastructure building? What will become of the work the Howard Buffett Foundation’s supporting on food security and conflict mitigation in a world beset by climate crisis and civil strife? For that matter, is it best that the Gates Foundation eventually cease to exist?

We don’t have definite answers to those questions, but they’re worth asking when one man’s wishes dictate how $100 billion will be spent.