After 17 years of steady payments, Warren Buffett has to date given annual donations totaling $50.7 billion toward his historic multibillion-dollar pledges to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and to four foundations connected to his family, according to a Chronicle tally. He announced his latest annual payments toward his pledges on Wednesday.
Buffett became the biggest donor in history in June 2006, when he pledged 10 million shares of his Berkshire Hathaway Class B stock, then valued at about $36.1 billion, to the Gates Foundation, plus 1 million Berkshire shares, then valued at $3.6 billion, to the foundation named for his late first wife, Susan Thompson Buffett, and 350,00 shares, then valued at about $1.3 billion apiece, to foundations created by his three children, Susan, Howard, and Peter Buffett.
Combined, those five pledges amounted to more than $43.5 billion at the time. In 2010, Buffett and Berkshire’s other shareholders approved a stock split, which significantly increased the number of shares Buffet has given the five foundations in the years since.
With these latest payments, he has given the Gates Foundation nearly $39.3 billion, the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation almost $4.2 billion, and more than $2.4 billion apiece to the Sherwood, Howard G. Buffett, and Novo foundations.