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Last month, the 93-year-old Oracle of Omaha announced that when he dies, most of his fortune — which sits at $130 billion, according to Bloomberg calculations — will go into a new charitable trust to be run by his three children. They must unanimously agree on how to spend the funds, he said.
“I feel very, very good about the values of my three children, and I have 100% trust in how they will carry things out,” he told The Wall Street Journal, announcing the plan.
Their rather vague mandate: “It should be used to help the people that haven’t been as lucky as we have been,” Buffett said.
This could raise a problem: Buffett’s kids — Susan, Howard, and Peter — are in their late 60s and early 70s, and each runs a foundation of their own. Looking at their individual organizations, the Buffett children could make for some strange charitable bedfellows once their father dies.
Recently, Buffett has been giving each of his children’s charities the same injection of money each year. Now, when he dies, his remaining money will all go into one big pot, he told the Journal — and the three children will have to agree on how to spend it.
Susan, who goes by Susie, and Peter didn’t respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, and Howard, whose family calls him Howie, declined to comment through his foundation. Still, you can sketch out a world where there could be some disagreement, with a version of a philanthropic “Succession” brewing under the surface.
And with such a huge pile of money to be managing, any disagreements among the Buffett children will go beyond familial, as the direction they take will “have plenty of practical implications for philanthropy and the nonprofit sector,” Jacob Harold, an expert in philanthropy and the former CEO of GuideStar, told BI over email.
What the Buffett children do now
Susie runs the Sherwood Foundation, which has given more than $1 billion to build equity in her native Nebraska across social justice, education, and healthcare. In 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, the foundation brought in $366 million and spent $239 million.
She also chairs the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named for her mother, which gives college scholarships and to reproductive rights organizations; is on the board of the Buffett Early Childhood Institute at the University of Nebraska, which focuses on early childhood development and education; and Girls, Inc., an organization that works with and advocates for girls. She also has a history of giving to Democrats and Democratic causes.
Howie, the middle Buffett, focuses his time on food security, as well as conflict mitigation and combatting human trafficking, through his Howard G. Buffett Foundation. His political donations have run the gamut. A farmer and former sheriff and “sworn law enforcement officer,” he’s devoted his attention to crime and security on the southern border — reportedly paying to arm private police, as well as writing a book and producing a film about the topic.
Howard Buffett also gave $520 million to Ukraine for humanitarian aid earlier this year. He’s set to succeed his father at the top of Berkshire Hathaway as non-executive chairman.
Peter, Buffett’s youngest child, is a musician and composer. He also heads the NoVo Foundation, which works with Indigenous communities and to combat food insecurity in Kingston, NY. Like his sister, his political donations have favored Democrats.
Practically, the fact that these charities are already set up could actually make matters easier. One answer to the giving conundrum is that the kids split up the trust evenly and have the money flow to their existing foundations. Buffett has already given over $2 billion worth of Berkshire Hathaway shares to each of his children’s organizations, and it’s natural for them to want to use the resources that will be at their disposal upon his death for their own charities.
Susie told the Journal that she could “imagine it will be probably some continuation of what we’ve been doing.”
Harold, the nonprofit expert, said the worldviews of the Buffett children should serve them well.
“My sense, though, is that while they have different programmatic priorities, they have similar principles,” he said. “So my hypothesis is that they will be able to come to an agreement on how to distribute the resources.”
This has happened before with a big charity
It’s not the first time something like this has happened: Take the Helmsley Charitable Trust. During their lifetime, Harry and Leona Helmsley gave mainly to health initiatives, but upon their deaths, their money went to a trust — now worth $8 billion — managed by people of Leona’s choosing — who seem, like the Buffetts, to have different philanthropic concerns.
The trust’s focus areas are, therefore, varying: One trustee has two kids with Type 1 Diabetes and leads programs funding global access to insulin and modernizing care. Another trustee is interested in Israel and has led donations to various causes there. The third trustee, a grandchild of the Hemsleys, focuses his energy and funds on children in sub-Saharan Africa.
In the end, the giving may seem fragmented, sure. But with billions of dollars at hand, there’s enough to go around.
