2nd Richest Man In The World Will Give Away 85% Of His Fortune!

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Warren Buffett has proven to be one of the most, if not the most, charitable businessmen in the entire world. His prowess for business and making money is equal to his desire to help people who need his help. He is currently the third richest man in the world, and one of the most charitable. He has been working for a long time with fellow billionaire Bill Gates on charitable causes and in 20006, Buffett announced that he would be giving 85 percent of his wealthy to charity, most to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

When asked about how he feels about not holding on to his fortune and giving it to his children, Buffett says that giving them all the money he has earned is probably not the best thing for him. He said that there are sensible ways of passing on possessions and security to them but without depriving the kids of the feeling of achievement and working to create something on their own.

Buffett is intent on giving the majority of his fortune, which is worth well over $40 billion, to charity over the court of time. He said earlier that he would be giving this money to charity once he died, but he has revised the timetable a bit. The plan is similar in style to everything Buffett has been doing in his career, and mimics the characteristics of his business sense and thinking that has made him his money. It is original and innovative, and it is a new way for rich people to donate to charity. He has pledged 85 percent of his money to five foundations. Most of the money will go to Bill and Melinda’s foundation, which is the largest philanthropic organization in the world. Gates and Buffett have been friends since 1991 and have been working together on innovative ways to get the richest people of the country and world to help the rest of the world as much as they can. Their actions in this field are already international famous and they have been working together for decades now in the goal of promoting health around the world, fighting malaria, AIDS, tuberculosis and other diseases. Their efforts also focus on education and on improving libraries and schools especially.

Buffett has become a trustee in the Gates foundation and his money has enabled the organization to deepen and intensify its activities.

To maintain the status of a charitable foundation, the Gates Foundation must donate at least five percent of its assets each year, making the donations from the foundation each year amount to over $1.5 billion at least.

The Foundation has been organized into four divisions and into three grant-making programs – Global Health Program, Global Development Program, United States Program.

The Global Health Program gives about $800 million to world health causes, which is more than most United Nations organization and more than the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Some of its aims are to cure polio and other diseases. It also has a program for vaccinations and immunizations around the world, include a children’s vaccine program. It also deals with AIDS and HIV research and has donated about $287 million to the cause already. Visceral Leishmaniasis research is also important to the foundation, as is research for tuberculosis treatment as well. Starting in July, 2006, Buffett starting giving away stocks of his hugely successful Berkshire company.

It is also important to note that Berkshire stocks continue to grow in value, which actually makes the donations more valuable as the years go by. In 2006 alone, Buffett made donations of $315 million to foundations that are headed by his children and one foundation that is named after his late wife. When she died in 2004, her will have $2.5 billion to the charity and Buffett will look to increase donations there as well. That foundation named after his late wife Susan Thompson Buffett specializes on helping with matters that are related to reproductive health, family planning, and pro-choice causes. The foundation also works in the fight for preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. So the plan was to decrease his holdings in the company gradually. He owned 31 percent of shares in 2006 and he is looking to decrease his stake in the company to 5 percent, stating that this 5 percent will probably end up going to charity as well once he has died. That 5 percent at the end alone would be worth about $7 billion. It is estimated that he will be giving $37 million total in the end, but since his Berkshire stock prices will no doubt continue to increase, it will probably be even more in the end. This will easily be the largest philanthropic gift in the history of the world.

Buffett started his career as an investment salesman in the mid-1950s. At the age of 20, he had saved roughly $10,000 and went to Washington D.C. to the headquarters of the Geico insurance company where he met with its then vice-president Lorimer Davidson. This is where his interests began, and Davidson, who would go on to be a good friend and business associate, said that he knew that Buffett was an extraordinary person within the first 15 minutes of their first conversation. He graduated from Columbia and want to work on Wall Street, but that did not pan out. Instead, he went have to Omaha, where is was born, and worked as a stockbroker. After taking a speaking course that gave him confidence, he began teaching a course in Investment Principles, where most of the students attending were twice his age.

In 1956, he started Buffett Partnership Ltd, with his savings of $174,000, which is roughly $1.2 million by today’s standards. He became a millionaire in 1962 and began to invest in the textile manufacturing company Berkshire Hathaway, which he later took over. He became a billionaire in 1990.

Thanks to Buffett and the Gates family, their foundation has money to use that rivals organizations such as the UNESCO and even exceeds them greatly. For example, UNESCO’s budget for 2005 was about $610 million while the Gates Foundation made $1.36 billion in grant payments in 2005 alone. Buffett’s contributions more than double that amount of money annually.

Buffett and Gates are both business partners and friends and have been for decades, so this linking of their legacies is no surprise. They travel together, play bridge together and advice each other on both personal and business matters regularly. Gates is even on the Berkshire board of directors and owns about $300 million worth of stock in the company.

In recent years, the two have shifted their focuses away from the businesses and started to focus more on the foundation and what they could do for the less fortunate people of the world.

Gates ranked the second richest man in the world with $53 billion, while Buffett came in third with $47 billion.

Bill and Melinda Gates have given more than $28 billion to their foundation. In total, the foundation has given away more than $22 billion for health improvements in poor countries and to improve American schools.

Gates is one of the most well-known American businessmen and is best know for his company Microsoft, the software company that he developed along with partner Paul Allen. He was ranked as the wealthiest person in the world from 1995 to 2009 for almost every year. He is also probably the single most successful entrepreneur of the personal computer revolution. But Gates has shifted much of his attention to philanthropy and has focused his attention on his foundation and the charitable organizations and scientific research programs that it deals with. As of 2006 he has been working full-time at the foundation and part-time at Microsoft.

Most people with the kind of money Buffett has would probably make their own foundations, especially if they are dealing with these enormous sums of money. With entrusting the money to the Gates foundation, it is easy to see how close they are and how important their work together is now. Buffett is also aware that Gates is 25 years younger than he is, and believes that he is the perfect person to continue what he has been doing for many years to come after he finally passes.

He originally planned to give all of the money away once he had died, buy Buffett said that the fact that he admires and trusts the Gateses and the fact that he is certain now of who he wants to give the money to, has made him start giving the money away earlier.

Over the last 45 or so years, Buffett has built Berkshire into one of the largest and most successful insurance companies in the world. He also has holdings in many other things – well-known media companies, consumer products and energy companies. He is also a stock market wiz and a has been a model investor for many decades now. He said that he has a talented manager who will continue his work once he has passed and that the shares of his company are ideal assets for underpinning the work of a foundation for a long period of time. He also said that the “multitude of diversified and powerful streams of earnings, Gibraltar-like financial strength, and a deeply-imbedded culture of acting in the best interests of shareholders,” will also ensure that that the Berkshire stocks will be able to fund the foundation successfully for a long period of time.

However, the plight does not stop there. Several years after Buffett announced his plan to give his wealth to the Gates foundation, the two partners had another idea as well.

They decided that their next goal was to convince other people who are in a similar situation to do the same. Namely, they are calling on the hundreds of billionaires who love in America to give away at least half of their wealth to charity. They set up a series of dinner parties with some of the richest people in America to talk about their Giving Pledge campaign. The campaign consists of getting the wealthiest people of the world to sign a pledge publicly stating that they will give away at least half of their fortunes either during their lifetimes or after they die.

The United States is home to 403 billionaires, the most in the world.

The first four families that agree to the pledge were real estate and construction billionaire Eli Broad, venture capitalist John Doerr, media entrepreneur Gerry Lenfest and former Cisco Systems (CSCO.O) Chairman John Morgridge. Broad stated that he and his wife would pledge 75 percent of their wealth, which is an estimate $5.7 billion. Lenfest has already given 6 percent of his fortune, about $800 million.

The Giving Pledge is not a charity of its own and it will not be taking any money, it just asks the billionaires to make a public pledge and a moral commitment that they will be giving most of their wealthy to charity when they die. According to the Giving Pledge, each person can decided to what charity they want to give their money and there is no obligation to give money to any particular charity, including the Gates Foundation.

If this effort is successful, there is a potential to bring a truly enormous amount of money into various non-profit organization and charities. Fortune magazine estimated that if the 400 richest Americans give 50 percent of their riches to charity, that would be a total of about $600 billion.

Buffett said that it is always a good topic to discuss, because he is sure that anyone who is wealthy has definitely thought about what they want to do with their money when they pass away. They might not have made a decision on what they are going to do, but they have definitely given it some thought, and the entire pledge campaign is making them think about it again. He also said that it is good to think ahead, because if they are making a final will at a very old age, they might not have the brain and will power to make the best decision.

He said that giving is a thing that normal people do as well, not just the rich. Many contribute money to churches, school and various organizations. This is money that they could be spending on their family as well.

“The dollars these people drop into a collection plate or give to United Way mean forgone movies, dinners out, or other personal pleasures. In contrast, my family and I will give up nothing we need or want by fulfilling this 99 percent pledge,” he said.

As of December 2010, a total of 57 billionaires have joined the campaign and pledged to give 50 percent or more of their wealth to charity. A minimum total of at least $125 billion has been promised from the first 40 donors based on how much they were collectively worth in August 2010.

Recently, they decided that they would be taking the campaign on to a global scale and not just focus on American billionaires anymore. Buffett said that he would meet wealthy individuals in India and China to talk about philanthropy and stated that they hope the idea of generosity will spread. In March 2011 Gates and Buffett visited India to talk with local billionaires about the Giving Pledge.