Buffett Makes Largest Donation Ever

Written by nickel - 5 Comments

In case you missed it, Warren Buffett (chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. and the second richest man in the world) has decided to donate nearly $31 billion to the Gates Foundation. In 2005, the Gates Foundation ranked just behind the country of Finland in global health spending. Buffett’s move, which stands as the largest charitable donation of all time, will double the amount of money that the Gates Foundation has at its disposal each year. For the sake of comparison, the inflation-adjusted contributions of other great U.S. philanthropists are as follows:

Andrew Carnegie: $7.2 billion
John D. Rockefeller: $7.1 billion
John Rockefeller, Jr.: $5.5 billion

The goals of the Gates Foundation, which has been bankrolled thus far by $26 billion from Bill and Melinda Gates, include improving the quality of schools across the country as well as eradicating the world’s top 20 diseases, including AIDs, malaria, and tuberculosis… No word yet on whether or not they’ll tackle the common cold.

Published on July 13th, 2006 - 5 Comments
Filed under: Charity
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Comments (scroll down to add your own):

And???
Comment by Charles — Jul 13th 2006 @ 8:54 pm
And… I thought it was interesting/impressive, so I wrote about it.

Comment by nickel — Jul 13th 2006 @ 9:07 pm
oh, i usually come to your site to learn possible ways of saving money. But, to have rich peoples actions (albeit a good thing)touted is an afront to what i thought this site was trying to do. Then again, you never really state what your goal or game plan is.
Comment by Charles — Jul 14th 2006 @ 1:07 am
Charles: I guess my main goal here is to share interesting tidbits about money that happen to strike my fancy. 90% (or more) of the time these things have to do with saving money, investing, taxes, retirement, protecting your credit, or some such. Sometimes they don’t. But I’d hardly consider talking someone donating $30 billion for the greater good to be an afront to anyone. It’s not like I started writing about the extravagancies of the Prince of Dubai, or something like that. And rest assured… I never will.

Comment by nickel — Jul 14th 2006 @ 9:48 am
My apologies!!

With california sucking 1K a month out of my paycheck for money i don’t owe them and the company that has the W2’s i lost to prove it taking 4 months to tell me they won’t resend them and having move 2 times to take jobs after 6 months of unemployment to finally stabalize in a job and am finally catching up (but will probably still lose my stuff in storage) and i only have 5K in debt (but as i have learned when people want your money they want it now! but they owe you money it could be 6-20 weeks before you see something). *Sigh*

I had looked to sites like yours to help with advice to kep my head above water till this all evened out and took offense to this posting and then lashed out.

You did nothing wrong, i just hate how the US finacial system has set themselves up, and if you make 1 mistake you spend more time and man hours trying to correct it and still recieve a black spot!

And, wierdly enough, I have met Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum (now deceased), when i was in UAE right after the ground war in Kuwait! He was very friendly (and yes very extravagant, but not overtly).

Again my apologies keep up the good work!!
Comment by Charles — Jul 16th 2006 @ 2:19 am