The next generation of Buffetts is poised to become one of the biggest forces in philanthropy

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The next generation of Buffetts — Howard, Susie and Peter — is poised to become one of the most powerful forces in philanthropy when their 94-year-old father, the legendary businessman and leader of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett, eventually passes away.

But it wasn't always going to be that way.

Buffett announced in June that he would donate his fortune, now valued at nearly $144 billion, to a charitable trust managed by his three children when he dies, instead of giving it to the Gates Foundation, as he indicated 18 years ago.

The next generation of Buffetts will then have 10 years to give the money away, Warren Buffett said.

In the meantime, the elder Buffett continues to make huge annual donations to the Gates Foundation and his four family foundations, which will continue throughout his lifetime. He first mentioned plans for a new charitable trust in November.

Howard Buffett told The Associated Press he's learned what his father told him and his siblings about philanthropy was true: “It’s not so easy to give away money if you want to do it smart, if you want to be intelligent about it.”

The middle Buffett child, Howard said his father is as sharp as ever and that he hopes he lives a long time, adding: "It’s pretty amazing that he’s giving us this opportunity.”

Buffett has entrusted Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates with significant annual gifts to their foundation since 2006 — a remarkable $43 billion to date .

“Wealthy people don’t tend to give their money to other people to give away,” said James Ferris, founding director of The Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy at the University of Southern California. But many of the wealthiest people are also hesitant to hand over their fortunes to the next generation over concerns that it hampers their ingenuity, he said.

Ferris thinks the story of Buffett’s changing philanthropic intentions is a positive one. “It shows how a donor is making choices and is adapting to circumstances,” he said.

The Gates Foundation did not say when it learned of Buffett’s decision or what the impact will be on its budget. It previously said in a statement that “Warren Buffett has been exceedingly generous,” and that he has “played an invaluable role in championing and shaping the foundation’s work to create a world where every person can live a healthy, productive life.”

Over the years, Buffett gave the Gates Foundation large annual donations, but also donated billions to foundations run by his three children and a fourth family foundation. Their work offers some insight into the priorities of the next generation of Buffetts.

The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named after Warren Buffett's first wife, is the largest in terms of donations. It supports organizations that provide reproductive health care and access to contraception and abortion around the world. Susie Buffett, 71, is its board chair and Peter Buffett, 66, is a board member.

Susie Buffett also leads The Sherwood Foundation, a major supporter of early childhood development nationally that gives grants to organizations and projects within Omaha, Nebraska, the Buffetts' hometown.

Peter Buffett's NoVo Foundation has been an important funder of organizations advocating for the autonomy of girls and women and against gender-based violence. In 2020, Peter and his wife, Jennifer, decided to reorient their focus, expanding their support for Native American communities and projects to build sustainable, local communities with a focus on agriculture and food access.

The Howard G. Buffett Foundation has focused on conflict mitigation and agriculture around the world. Since 2022, it has donated some $800 million — more than most countries — to humanitarian initiatives in Ukraine during the country's war with Russia. These include supporting food distribution at schools, demining activities, and the rebuilding of a major publishing company and a key bridge transporting grain.

In a relatively rare interview for a family that seldom makes time to speak with the media, Howard Buffett, 69, said he couldn’t predict exactly how he and his siblings would give away their father's fortune. However, he said they would continue to take risks and find ways to make the biggest difference as their father recommended.

“I can tell you, we’ll sit down in a room when the time comes, and we’ll get it figured out pretty quickly,” he said, acknowledging that the directive to donate all the money within 10 years was a challenge.

The siblings’ different ways of thinking and approaches to giving are assets, he said.

“What this is going to do is we’re going to bring all of our collective experience together,” he said.

But don’t expect to find the family name on a lot of buildings, which the siblings have largely avoid even as they've given away more than $15 billion of their father's money since 2006.

Kathleen Enright, president and CEO of the Council on Foundations, said the Buffetts have effectively made philanthropy a family business, with the next generation now seasoned donors who have built enduring institutions in their foundations.

“It is a big deal,” she said, of the amount of money that the Buffetts are poised to give away, noting that because the fortune will likely continue to grow, they will have to give away highly visible sums to spend it down.

The tight timeframe to give away his fortune after his death reflects one of Warren Buffett's longstanding conditions for receiving charitable funding. He has instructed the Gates Foundation and his family's foundations to grant out the full amount they received within a year.

The next generation of Buffetts have run their foundations with tiny staffs — much like how Warren Buffett oversees his massive Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate with only about two dozen people at its headquarters in Omaha.

Howard Buffett said his foundation employs just 22 staff members. It granted $458.1 million in 2023, according to tax documents. He acknowledged that his “lean” staff puts some limits on their capacity, but said the way they’ve scaled their work is through creating strong and enduring relationships with other organizations to help implement their ideas.

In contrast, the Gates Foundation has one of the largest endowments at $75.2 billion, funded by donations from Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. It employs more than 2,000 people, many of them technical experts all over the world, and is known for making highly directed grants with rigorous reporting requirements. The foundation has said it will wind down its operations within 25 years after its founders' deaths.

Howard Buffett said he likes a challenge and thinks that in general, wealthy people should give their money away within their lifetimes, rather than holding it in perpetual foundations.

“Somebody is going to spend that money. Somebody is going to give that money away,” he said. “So, I would rather do that with my brother and sister and do it together, as a partnership, than see it done any other way.”

This story has been updated to correct that Howard Buffett's foundation employs 22 staff members, not less than 10.

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

FILE - Howard Buffett receives presents during a visit with Colombia's President Ivan Duque, right, at a cocoa farm on Jan. 29, 2020 in La Gabarra, Colombia. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia, File)

This undated photo provided by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation shows philanthropist Howard Buffett, son of Warren Buffett, distributing aid in Posad-Pokrovske, Ukraine. (Spencer Taylor/Howard G. Buffett Foundation via AP)

FILE - Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, speaks to reporters before presiding over the annual shareholders meeting in Omaha, Neb., May 4, 2019. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)

FILE - Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, left, plays bridge with Bill Gates, following the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting on May 5, 2019 in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Ahn Sung-ki, one of South Korean cinema’s biggest stars whose prolific 60-year career and positive, gentle public image earned him the nickname “The Nation’s Actor,” died Monday. He was 74.

Ahn, who had suffered blood cancer for years, was pronounced dead at Seoul's Soonchunhyang University Hospital, his agency, the Artist Company, and hospital officials said.

“We feel deep sorrow at the sudden, sad news, pray for the eternal rest of the deceased and offer our heartfelt condolences to his bereaved family members," the Artist Company said in a statement.

President Lee Jae Myung issued a condolence message saying Ahn provided many people with comfort, joy and time for reflection. “I already miss his warm smile and gentle voice,” Lee wrote on Facebook.

Born to a filmmaker in the southeastern city of Daegu in 1952, Ahn made his debut as a child actor in the movie “The Twilight Train” in 1957. He subsequently appeared in about 70 movies as a child actor before he left the film industry to live an ordinary life.

In 1970, Ahn entered Seoul’s Hankuk University of Foreign Studies as a Vietnamese major. Ahn said he graduated with top honors but failed to land jobs at big companies, who likely saw his Vietnamese major largely useless after a communist victory in the Vietnam War in 1975.

Ahn returned to the film industry in 1977 believing he could still excel in acting. In 1980, he rose to fame for his lead role in Lee Jang-ho’s “Good, Windy Days,” a hit coming-of-age movie about the struggle of working-class men from rural areas during the country’s rapid rise. Ahn won the best new actor award in the prestigious Grand Bell Awards, the Korean version of the Academy Awards.

He later starred in a series of highly successful and critically acclaimed movies, sweeping best actor awards and becoming arguably the country’s most popular actor in much of the 1980-90s.

Some of his memorable roles included a Buddhist monk in 1981’s “Mandara,” a beggar in 1984’s “Whale Hunting,” a Vietnam War veteran-turned-novelist in 1992’s “White Badge,” a corrupt police officer in 1993’s “Two Cops,” a murderer in 1999’s “No Where To Hide,” a special forces trainer in 2003’s “Silmido” and a devoted celebrity manager in 2006’s “Radio Star.”

Ahn had collected dozens of trophies in major movie awards in South Korea, including winning the Grand Bell Awards for best actor five times, an achievement no other South Korean actors have matched yet.

Ahn built up an image as a humble, trustworthy and family-oriented celebrity who avoided major scandals and maintained a quiet, stable personal life. Past public surveys chose Ahn as South Korea’s most beloved actor and deserving of the nickname “The Nation’s Actor.”

Ahn said he earlier felt confined with his “The Nation's Actor” labeling but eventually thought that led him down the right path. In recent years, local media has given other stars similar honorable nicknames, but Ahn was apparently the first South Korean actor who was dubbed “The Nation's Actor.”

“I felt I should do something that could match that title. But I think that has eventually guided me on a good direction,” Ahn said in an interview with Yonhap news agency in 2023.

In media interviews, Ahn couldn’t choose what his favorite movie was, but said that his role as a dedicated, hardworking manger for a washed-up rock singer played by Park Jung-hoon resembled himself in real life the most.

Ahn was also known for his reluctance to do love scenes. He said said he was too shy to act romantic scenes and sometimes asked directors to skip steamy scenes if they were only meant to add spice to movies.

“I don’t do well on acting like looking at someone who I don’t love with loving eyes and kissing really romantically. I feel shy and can’t express such emotions well,” Ahn said in an interview with the Shindonga magazine in 2007. “Simply, I’m clumsy on that. So I couldn’t star in such movies a lot. But ultimately, that was a right choice for me.”

Ahn is survived by his wife and their two sons. A mourning station at a Seoul hospital was to run until Friday.

FILE - South Korean actor Ahn Sung-ki smiles for a photo on the red carpet at the 56th Daejong Film Awards ceremony in Seoul, South Korea, June 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)

FILE - South Korean actor Ahn Sung-ki attends an event as part of the 11th Pusan International Film Festival in Busan, South Korea, Oct. 13, 2006. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)