Giving away a fortune: What could Warren Buffett's adult children support?

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Warren Buffett's adult children — Susie, Howard and Peter Buffett — have long track records as philanthropists, giving away more than $15 billion of their dad's money through their foundations since 2006.

But because they don’t habitually seek publicity about their donations, they've flown under the radar as a force within philanthropy.

Now that their father has entrusted them to donate the rest of his fortune following his death, the next generation of Buffetts is poised to become one of the largest donors in the country, tasked with giving away around $144 billion, by today's estimates, within 10 years.

The next generation of Buffetts have supported different causes over the years, but their foundations share some characteristics. They operate with small staffs and when they have spoken publicly about their giving, they talk about taking risks to confront hard problems or fund ventures others might not.

The work of the family's foundations may offer some insight into what they might support and how they might operate when the time comes to give away their fortune.

Named after Warren Buffett's first wife, it has donated $8.4 billion mainly to reproductive health care organizations, according to the charitable grants database Candid. It also funds access to abortion and contraception, granting hundreds of millions over the years to Planned Parenthood affiliates, the National Abortion Federation, and Population Services International, which works outside the U.S.

The foundation has faced criticism from some in the field of reproductive justice who say funding anonymously without a public grant application process perpetuates inequities. Essentially, those who have connections get funded and those who don't, do not. The foundation did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment.

Susie Buffett's ex-husband, Allen Greenberg, is the foundation's president, Susie Buffett is the board chair and Peter Buffett is a member of the board, according to its most recent tax filings.

Susie Buffett's foundation has been a stalwart funder for early childhood education within the U.S.

The foundation's largest grantee is the nonprofit Buffett Early Childhood Fund, of which Susie Buffett is board chair. It has granted hundreds of millions of dollars for research, advocacy, training and support for child care providers.

In 2005, the fund helped found the Alliance for Early Success, which supports state-level advocacy for early childhood education programs. Since then, it's provided “no strings attached” funding without any annual application or report, said Helene Stebbins, its executive director.

“You talk about trust-based philanthropy — and there’s a lot of work being done to encourage philanthropy to go in that direction right now — Susie and the Buffett Early Childhood Fund have been doing it for 20 years,” Stebbins said.

The lion's share of Howard Buffett's grantmaking supports food security and conflict mitigation internationally.

His foundation has supported coffee and cacao farmers in El Salvador and the Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A major partner is Catholic Relief Services, which it has funded for at least 15 years to support farmers in Central America.

“Howard was particularly interested in addressing the factors that were driving people to leave rural communities in Central America and Mexico and risk everything to migrate to the U.S. and that’s where our vision really came together,” said Erica Dahl-Bredine, a senior adviser at CRS.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Howard Buffett visited within weeks and reconfigured the foundation’s plans to respond to the humanitarian crisis and impact of the war on agriculture.

“Every time I leave Ukraine to return home, I ask myself the same question: If we do not stand with Ukraine as they fight to defend their freedom, then what value do we place on our own freedom?” he wrote in the foundation's 2023 report.

For many years, Peter Buffett and his wife, Jennifer, focused their grantmaking on supporting girls around the world, including the “Girl Effect,” campaign with the Nike Foundation. They also supported the use of social-emotional learning in schools.

In 2020, they made a major change in strategic approach, laying off a significant part of their staff and spinning off or planning to wind down much of their funding supporting girls rights and combating gender-based violence. The decision elicited a strong reaction from groups that felt the foundation had betrayed their trust, though it remains a significant philanthropic supporter of girls, especially Black girls and other girls of color.

“We had to make very difficult decisions around what was creating meaningful change and what was fighting against a system that appeared futile,” Peter Buffett wrote in an email to the AP. “We were also always concerned about dependency on a single funder and we’re happy to see other funders coming into the field.”

Since 2022, the foundation has increased its support for Native American organizations, which Peter Buffet has been interested in since he composed some of the music for the film “Dances With Wolves” and wrote the score for the miniseries “500 Nations.” His foundation now also funds projects like a community farm, grain mill and radio station near Kingston, New York, where Peter and Jennifer Buffett live, as part of its support for sustainable, local communities.

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 - Peter Buffett, left, Warren Buffett, center, and Susie Buffett attend the world premiere screening of HBO's "Becoming Warren Buffett" at The Museum of Modern Art on Jan. 19, 2017 in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)

In this undated photo, Philanthropist Howard Buffett, who will help distribute his dad Warren Buffett’s fortune after his death, takes pictures in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, during one of his many trips to Ukraine since Russia invaded that country. (Oles Maliarevych via AP)

FILE - The children of Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett, from left, Howard Buffett, Susie Buffett, and Peter Buffett, pose for a photo at the CenturyLink Center exhibit hall in Omaha, Neb., May 1, 2015. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Iranian hackers sought to interest President Joe Biden's campaign in information stolen from rival Donald Trump's campaign, sending unsolicited emails to people associated with the then-Democratic candidate in an effort to interfere in the 2024 election, the FBI and other federal agencies said Wednesday.

There's no indication that any of the recipients responded, officials said, and several media organizations approached over the summer with leaked stolen information have also said they did not respond. Kamala Harris' presidential campaign called the emails from Iran “unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity” that were received by only a few people who regarded them as spam or phishing attempts.

The emails were received before the hack of the Trump campaign was publicly acknowledged, and there’s no evidence the recipients of the emails knew their origin.

The announcement is the latest U.S. government effort to call out what officials say is Iran’s brazen, ongoing work to interfere in the election, including a hack-and-leak campaign that the FBI and other federal agencies linked last month to Tehran.

U.S. officials in recent months have used criminal charges, sanctions and public advisories to detail actions taken by foreign adversaries to influence the election, including an indictment targeting a covert Russian effort to spread pro-Russia content to U.S. audiences.

It's a stark turnabout from the government's response in 2016, when Obama administration officials were criticized for not being forthcoming about the Russian interference they were seeing on Trump's behalf as he ran against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

In this case, the hackers sent emails in late June and early July to people who were associated with Biden's campaign before he dropped out. The emails “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” according to a statement released by the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

The agencies have said the Trump campaign hack and an attempted breach of the Biden-Harris campaign are part of an effort to undermine voters’ faith in the election and to stoke discord.

The FBI informed Trump aides within the last 48 hours that information hacked by Iran had been sent to the Biden campaign, according to a senior campaign official granted anonymity to speak because of the sensitive nature of the investigation.

The Trump campaign disclosed on Aug. 10 that it had been hacked and said Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents. At least three news outlets — Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post — were leaked confidential material from inside the Trump campaign. So far, each has refused to reveal any details about what it received.

Politico reported that it began receiving emails on July 22 from an anonymous account. The source — an AOL email account identified only as “Robert” — passed along what appeared to be a research dossier that the campaign had apparently done on the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. The document was dated Feb. 23, almost five months before Trump selected Vance as his running mate.

In a statement, Harris campaign spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein said the campaign has cooperated with law enforcement since learning that people associated with Biden’s team were among the recipients of the emails.

“We’re not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign; a few individuals were targeted on their personal emails with what looked like a spam or phishing attempt,” Finkelstein said. "We condemn in the strongest terms any effort by foreign actors to interfere in U.S. elections including this unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity.

Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the effort to dangle stolen information to the Biden campaign “further proof the Iranians are actively interfering in the election” to help Harris.

Intelligence officials have said Iran opposes Trump’s reelection, seeing him as more likely to increase tension between Washington and Tehran. Trump’s administration ended a nuclear deal with Iran, reimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, an act that prompted Iran’s leaders to vow revenge.

Iran’s intrusion on the Trump campaign was cited as just one of the cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns identified by tech companies and national security officials at a hearing Wednesday of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Executives from Meta, Google and Microsoft briefed lawmakers on their plans for safeguarding the election, and the attacks they’d seen so far.

“The most perilous time I think will come 48 hours before the election,” Microsoft President Brad Smith told lawmakers during the hearing, which focused on American tech companies’ efforts to safeguard the election from foreign disinformation and cyberattacks.

Associated Press writer Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump makes a campaign stop at Pubkey Bar and Media House, Wednesday, Sept.18, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)