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)

A tense calm hangs over Venezuela after the U.S. military operation that deposed President Nicolás Maduro, who was brought to New York to face criminal charges.

President Donald Trump said the U.S. would “run” the South American country and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations.

Maduro and his wife landed late Saturday afternoon at a small airport in New York. The couple face U.S. charges of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.

The dramatic action capped an intensive Trump administration pressure campaign on Venezuela’s autocratic leader and months of secret planning, resulting in the most assertive American action to achieve regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Legal experts raised questions about the lawfulness of the operation, which was done without congressional approval. Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, meanwhile, demanded that the United States free Maduro and called him the country’s rightful leader as her nation’s high court named her interim president.

Here's the latest:

Associated Press video on Sunday shows a banner now on display in Iran’s capital warning the United States and Israel that their soldiers could be killed if they take action in the country.

Trump’s recent comment that the U.S. “will come to their rescue” if Iran kills peaceful protesters has taken on a new meaning after the U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a longtime ally of Tehran.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has condemned the “illegal U.S. attack against Venezuela.” U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said adversaries of the U.S. should note that “America can project our will anywhere, anytime.”

From California to Missouri and Texas, protestors are planning demonstrations Sunday and through the week against President Donald Trump’s military operation and capture of Maduro, which one protest description called “the illegal, unconstitutional invasion of Venezuela.”

Dozens appear to be organized by chapters of Indivisible, a left-leaning group, and many take umbrage with Trump’s plans to take control of Venezuela’s oil industry and ask American companies to revitalize it.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa who serves as Senate president pro tempore, posted on X Saturday that Maduro is a narco-terrorist and his drug trafficking resulted in the deaths of too many Americans. He likened the Trump operation to then-President George Bush’s decision in 1989 to capture Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega following his indictment for drug trafficking.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat and one of President Donald Trump’s most outspoken critics, posted that U.S. military action in Venezuela is unconstitutional and is putting troops in harm’s way with no long-term strategy. “The American people deserve a President focused on making their lives more affordable,” Pritzker wrote.

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat from Wisconsin, posted a statement on X calling the strikes illegal and criticizing Trump for taking action without congressional approval. “The President does not have the unilateral authority to invade foreign countries, oust their governments, and seize their resources,” she wrote.

France’s foreign minister says the departure of President Nicolás Maduro “is good news for the Venezuelans” and called for a peaceful and democratic transition of power.

Jean-Noël Barrot said “Maduro was an unscrupulous dictator who confiscated Venezuelans’ freedom and stole their elections.”

“Then, yes, we pointed out that the method used infringes the principles of international law,” Barrot said about the U.S. military operation on France 2 national television.

Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader, called Maduro “a horrible, horrible person” but added, “You don’t treat lawlessness with other lawlessness. And that’s what’s happened.”

“We have learned through the years that, when America tries to regime change and nation-building in this way, the American people pay the price in both blood and results,” Schumer told ABC’s “This Week.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says President Donald Trump’s conversations with Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez now are ”very matter-of-fact and very clear: You can lead or you can get out of the way, because we’re not going to allow you to continue to subvert American influence and our need to have a free country like Venezuela to work with rather than to have dictators in place who perpetuate crimes and drug trafficking.”

Noem tells “Fox News Sunday” that the United States wants a leader in Venezuela who will be “a partner that understands that we’re going to protect America” when it comes to stopping drug trafficking and “terrorists from coming into our country.”

She says that “we’re looking for a leader that will stand up beside us and embrace those freedoms and liberties for the Venezuelan people but also ensure that they’re not perpetuating crimes around the globe like they’ve had in the past.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to back off Trump’s assertions that the U.S. was running Venezuela, insisting instead that Washington will use control of the South American country’s oil industry to force policy changes and, “We expect that it’s going to lead to results here.”

“We’re hopeful, hopeful, that it does positive results for the people for Venezuela,” Rubio told ABC’s “This Week.” “But, ultimately, most importantly, in the national interest of the United States.”

Asked about Trump suggesting that Rubio would be among the U.S. officials helping to run Venezuela, Rubio offered no details but said, “I’m obviously very intricately involved in the policy” going forward.

He said of Venezuela’s interim leader: “We don’t believe this regime in place is legitimate” because the country never held free and fair elections.

Venezuela’s capital Caracas was unusually quiet Sunday with few vehicles moving around. Convenience stores, gas stations and other businesses were mostly closed.

The presence of police and members of the military across the city was notable for its smaller size compared with an average day and even more so with the days when people protested against Maduro’s government in previous years.

Meanwhile, soldiers attempted to clear an area of an air base that had been on fire along with at least three passenger buses following Saturday’s U.S. attack.

The Brooklyn jail holding Nicolás Maduro is a facility so troubled that some judges have refused to send people there even as it has housed such famous inmates as music stars R. Kelly and Sean “Diddy” Combs.

Opened in the early 1990s, the Metropolitan Detention Center, or MDC Brooklyn, currently houses about 1,300 inmates.

It’s the routine landing spot for people awaiting trial in federal courts in Manhattan and Brooklyn, holding alleged gangsters and drug traffickers alongside some people accused of white collar crimes.

Maduro is not the first president of a country to be locked up there.

Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, was imprisoned at MDC Brooklyn while he was on trial for trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine into the U.S. Hernández was pardoned and freed by President Donald Trump in December.

▶ Read more about MDC Brooklyn

Residents look at a damaged apartment complex that neighbors say was hit during U.S. strikes to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, in Catia La Mar, Venezuela, Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

A soldier stands atop an armored vehicle driving toward Caracas, Venezuela, Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

Shoppers line up at a supermarket in Caracas, Venezuela, Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)