Another billion-dollar gift: Warren Buffett has already donated so many billions

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• Buffett makes multi-billion dollar summer gift
• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation again main beneficiary
• Buffett’s greatest philanthropist of all time

“Society has a use for my money. I don’t have any,” said star investor Warren Buffett, head of investment holding Berkshire Hathaway and multiple billionaire, in a 2021 statement. “Over many decades I have amassed an almost unbelievable amount of money just by doing what I love to do. I have made no sacrifices, neither has my family. Compound interest, a long history, wonderful employees and our incredible country just have their magic unfolded”. This is how Buffett explained last year his motivation for making a large part of his wealth available to charity.

That he’s delivering on that promise, which he helped found with the creation of the Giving Pledge, a philanthropic campaign he co-founded with his friend and Microsoft founder Bill Gates 2010, publicly propagated, and actually implemented, Buffett has been proving impressively for several years. 99 percent of his wealth, which consists primarily of shares in Berkshire Hathaway, is to go to charitable foundations. In the past year, Buffett has already reached an impressive milestone in this goal: Around half of his Berkshire shares had already been donated at that point.

New billion donation in June 2022

In 2022, the philanthropist is sticking to that approach, having donated an additional $4 billion in Berkshire Hathaway stock as part of his annual summer fundraiser. For the 17th summer in a row, shares in the investment holding went to charitable foundations.

The biggest beneficiary of the donation was once again the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which Buffett has honored every year since 2006. The investor bequeathed $3.1 billion worth of shares to the charity that Bill Gates founded with his ex-wife. Another $300 million block of shares went to his late wife’s foundation, the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation. Buffett’s children’s charities, the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, and the NoVo Foundation, each received $200 million in stock.

Greatest philanthropist of all time

The billion-dollar donation this summer cements Buffett’s reputation as the greatest philanthropist of all time. According to Forbes, the total amount that Warren Buffett has donated by January 2022 alone is 46.1 billion US dollars. According to the portal, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is around ten billion US dollars behind star investor Buffett in terms of donations.

The new billion-dollar donation dropped Buffett, who was previously the 5th richest person in the world, to 7th among the super-rich. By his own admission, the 91-year-old owns 229,016 Berkshire Class A shares, about half the shares Buffett owned as of June 2006, prior to his pledge to donate a majority of it.

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