Then she announced plans to distribute $1 billion

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In June 2024, Melinda French Gates left the iconic foundation she started with her former husband, Bill, and started her solo philanthropic journey with a bang. First, she gave the foundation a parting gift of $502 million. (While it’s not a competition, that was nearly three times as much as her ex donated.)

over two years via Pivotal Ventures, an organization she founded in 2015, which blends investments, philanthropy and advocacy. "I believe in using every tool in my toolbox," French Gates told TIME shortly after she left the Gates Foundation. "Whether that's philanthropic money, whether that's private money I use for investing in social good or whether it's C4 money to do political giving." Her goal is to lift the fortunes and influence of women, girls, and families, both in the U.S. and internationally; early grantees include The National Partnership for Women & Families and the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School.Billionaire investor c level contact list Warren Buffett, CEO and chair of Berkshire Hathaway, has indelibly shaped modern giving. He, along with Bill and Melinda French Gates, co-founded the Giving Pledge in 2010, encouraging the world’s richest people to pledge at least half of their fortunes to charity, an initiative that has had a profound impact on giving norms among the ultra-wealthy. Buffett himself plans to donate more than 99% of his wealth—currently valued at around $150 billion—during his lifetime or upon his death.

The 94-year-old recently announced plans to step down as CEO at the end of 2025, and surprised the philanthropic world last year by announcing that nearly all of his remaining wealth after he dies will go to a new charitable trust overseen by his three children, not to the Gates Foundation as previously indicated. “I feel very, very good about the values of my three children, and I have 100% trust in how they will carry things out,” Buffett told the Wall Street Journal.

Buffett’s philanthropy has long focused on education, agriculture, and anti-poverty programs, among other causes. In 2024, he gifted more than $1.1 billion of Berkshire Hathaway stock to four of his family’s foundations, including the Susan T. Buffett Foundation, which has offered scholarships to college students in Buffett’s native Nebraska for more than 50 years.