A Quiet Giant, the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation Gives Big for Reproductive Care

STBF Has given over $350 million to Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Philip Rozenski/shutterstock

Every year, private funders give hundreds of millions to support sexual and reproductive health, including abortion access. But one of the top funders in this space, the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation (STBF), doesn’t publicize its grantmaking. While visiting the foundation’s website, which only focuses on scholarships in Nebraska, you’d never know that it’s one of the largest grantmakers in the United States. It gave away $624 millions in 2018—more than the Ford Foundation.

STBF’s deep pockets aren’t surprising, given that it was founded by billionaire Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett and his wife, the late Susan Thompson Buffett. It was established as the Buffett Foundation in 1964 and renamed for Susan after her passing in 2004. Every year, STBF receives big infusions of Berkshire Hathaway stock from Warren—gifts that totaled $259 million in 2018.

These funds and payouts from a $2.4 billion endowment support the foundation’s work as the biggest abortion funder in the U.S. and one of the largest funders of reproductive health and rights in the country and world. Other major supporters of these issues include the Gates, Ford, Hewlett and Packard foundations.

STBF flies so far below the radar that it’s hard to find statements in which it describes its own work. But in a 2016 job listing, the foundation said it “is committed to supporting [the Buffetts’] vision for creating a better world—one in which people are ever more loving, healthy, educated and respectful to each other.” Its mission is to “prevent unintended pregnancy and ensure access to safe abortion in the U.S. and internationally.” STBF funds diverse approaches—some grantees spar in the Supreme Court, while others provide rural abortion services in Africa.

The foundation doesn’t talk to the media. When I called, asking if representatives would like to contribute to the article (even perhaps speaking just on their higher education grantmaking), I was told that if I didn’t hear back, they would not be participating. I never heard back.

STBF’s grantees are also reluctant to talk. According to reports, in some cases, agreeing not to discuss the foundation has been a funding stipulation. But as a private foundation, STBF reveals much about its grantmaking in annual tax filings. This article draws from that information, as well as Foundation Center data and past reporting by Inside Philanthropy and other publications.

Susan and Warren

Susan Thompson Buffett was a philanthropist, singer and proponent of women’s and civil rights, among other things. She and Warren’s parents knew each other in Nebraska, but the two did not meet until Susan was the college roommate of Warren’s sister. The now-famous investor courted her by having jam sessions on the ukulele with her mandolin-playing father. They were married in 1952, and had three children: Peter, Howard and Susan (Susie), who now each run foundations that receive annual infusions of Berkshire Hathaway stock.

Warren bought his first stock at age 11 and acquired Berkshire Hathaway in the 1960s, when it was a textile manufacturing firm. Gradually, he converted it into an investment firm, and under his guidance, it grew into one of the largest and most successful holding companies in the world. Susan was a director of Berkshire Hathaway and president of the Buffett Foundation. From 1977 on, the Buffetts lived apart, but remained married and close friends.

“Unconventional is not a bad thing,” Warren and Susan's daughter, Susie, who now chairs STBF, told the New York Times in 2006. “More people should have unconventional marriages.” Susie’s ex-husband, Allen Greenberg, is STBF president. He was put in charge of the foundation’s operations in 1987, and for years, was its only employee. For a long time, the foundation gave away lots of money, though not compared to the family fortune. It made big gifts annually to a relatively small number of groups, including Planned Parenthood and International Projects Assistance Services.

Susan Thompson Buffett died in 2004 and left almost all of her Berkshire shares, worth about $3 billion at the time, to the foundation, which was renamed for her. Overnight, it joined the ranks of the top 25 foundations in the U.S. and stepped up its giving dramatically.

Before Susan’s death, Warren generally took a back seat at the foundation and said he expected her to outlive him and handle the distribution of their wealth. But in 2006, he announced he would contribute most of his then-estimated $44 billion fortune to a number of philanthropic efforts. While he made his most prominent commitment to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, he also made substantial pledges to the four foundations controlled by his children: the NoVo Foundation, Sherwood Foundation, Howard G. Buffett Foundation and STBF. And in 2010, he and Gates launched the Giving Pledge, asking billionaires to commit to donate at least half of their wealth to charities.

Buffett’s fortune currently stands at about $90 billion. In 2019, his annual gift from his Berkshire holdings to the five foundations totaled $3.6 billion. He has now given about 45% of his 2006 holdings to these foundations.

In a Charlie Rose interview that was broadcast posthumously, Susan said philanthropy gave her “great joy,” and that she was most inspired by the people she met around the world while traveling with the foundation: “Doctors and volunteers and all kinds of human beings who have made a choice in their life to serve others.”

Why STBF Funds Reproductive Care

In the 2004 conversation with Rose, Susie said of Warren, “He’s very pro-women… Warren feels that women all over the world get shortchanged. That’s why he’s so pro-choice.”

In 2015, Bloomberg Businessweek published the details of a previously archived 2008 interview with Judith DeSarno, STBF’s former director of domestic programs, in a reproductive health oral history project.

“For Warren, it’s economic. He thinks that unless women can control their fertility—and that it’s basically their right to control their fertility—that you are sort of wasting more than half of the brainpower in the United States. Well, not just the United States. Worldwide,” DeSarno said.

The rising world population is another important issue for Buffett. Susie Buffett told The Chronicle of Philanthropy in 1997 that population control was a big driver of her father’s giving. She said, “[Population control] was what my father has always believed was the biggest and most important issue, so that will be the [foundation’s] focus.” Buffett biographer Roger Lowenstein wrote that Warren had a “Malthusian dread” of overpopulation's potential negative effects in “Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist.”

The foundation states, “It is dedicated to improving the lives of women and families through reproductive choice that is dignified, respectful of women’s fertility desires, and evidence-based.” It works toward this goal domestically and internationally, as many policies by the U.S. and other governments significantly limit people’s access to sexual and reproductive wellness and freedom.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which received about $5 million from STBF in 2018, offers an online map and analysis of abortion laws around the world. It states 59% of women of reproductive age (about 970 million women) live in nations where abortion is “broadly” allowed. But 41% of women live with restrictive abortion laws. In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) and Guttmacher Institute (both STBF grantees) released a study finding that each year between 2010 and 2014, 25 million unsafe abortions were performed (comprising about 45% of all such procedures). And early in his presidency, Trump reinstated the “global gag rule,” which denies U.S. funding to groups abroad that provide, refer or counsel patients for abortions.

In 2017, 89% of U.S. counties did not have a clinic facility that provides abortion care. About 38% of women aged 15 to 44 lived in these counties, according to Guttmacher, a sexual and reproductive health and rights research and policy organization.

In 2019, the Trump administration withdrew Title X federal family planning grants from organizations that provide or refer patients for abortions, initiating what some call a “domestic gag rule.” Also, many states have introduced or passed new abortion bans and restrictions of late, emboldened by policies from Trump and other Republicans, along with a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. The ongoing discord and battle over abortion at home and abroad sets the stage on which STBF plays a massive role.

STBF’s Recent Grantmaking

STBF gave out more than $5 billion in total between 2003 and 2018, including hundreds of millions to branches of Planned Parenthood and to Ipas, an international nonprofit that focuses on safe abortions and contraception.  While many grants range from $100,000 to $500,000, STBF regularly awards millions. Observers note that the portfolio diversification that earned Buffett his fortune doesn’t seem to apply to his one-cause philanthropic mission, but we do see a variety of approaches within STBF’s singular funding issue of reproductive choice and access. It supports a wide range of grantees and strategies, including major abortion rights advocates and reproductive healthcare providers with strong institutional capacity, policy-focused research projects, frontline grassroots abortion advocates, and more. Warren Buffett was named the “sugar daddy of the entire pro-abortion movement” by Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins, according to the conservative Media Resource Center.

Within the broad field of global reproductive healthcare funding, the Gates Foundation is the top funder, giving about $4.6 billion to this cause between 2003 and 2018. STBF comes in second, granting $3.4 billion. STBF is the leader in U.S.-centered reproductive health funding, giving away about $1.5 billion ($344 million specifically for abortion).

A perusal of STBF’s 2018 tax forms shows Population Services International (PSI) received the largest single grant of about $32 million. It’s a global nonprofit working in the realms of contraceptive and reproductive health, HIV, malaria and other issues. This is a repeat STBF grantee—in 2008, it received STBF’s biggest single grant between 2003 and 2018 of $76 million. According to PSI’s site, it works to ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health services in over 30 countries, “empowering women, girls and couples to choose the families they desire.”

Marie Stopes International is another principal STBF grantee. While it did not receive STBF money in 2018, the foundation gave it $48 million in 2017 and $57 million in 2009, along with grants in other years. It provides reproductive health services for women in 37 countries and contraception to more than 30 million “women and their partners.”

STBF also gave major support to the Society of Family Planning in 2018 through several grants totaling about $28 million. This Philadelphia-based nonprofit is currently focused on increasing access to medication abortion, and STBF has backed this group in the past. This makes sense, because the foundation also funded (and funds) the Population Council, a global health and social science nonprofit that conducted research aiding the approval of RU-486, AKA Mifeprex (the brand name for mifepristone), known as the abortion pill. STBF has also supported Gynuity Health Projects, which focuses on medication abortion and reproductive health technologies.

DKT, another repeat grantee, is an international nonprofit that works with family planning, HIV/AIDS prevention and abortion products. It received three STBF grants totaling about $26 million in 2018. The hotline for the National Abortion Federation (NAF), the professional association of abortion providers, was also a top STBF recipient in 2018, taking in approximately $21.2 million. STBF has long supported the NAF.

STBF funds state and regional chapters of Planned Parenthood and the NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation, along with their national centers. In 2018, it gave about $12 million to various arms of Planned Parenthood, including its international hub.

STBF also backed the National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF) with about $3.4 million in 2018. Abortion funds remove local financial and logistical barriers to abortion access. And it gave almost $3 million to the Groundswell Fund, which coordinates a movement of reproductive and social justice organizations led by communities of color. Here, we see the foremost private U.S. abortion funder investing in grassroots-based organizations, a trend among other major funders in this realm, including Hewlett and Packard.

STBF has provided crucial backing to many other groups, including the National Women’s Law Center, the Clinton Health Access Initiative and Medical Students for Choice, which trains med students to practice reproductive healthcare and perform abortions. As we mentioned earlier, the Guttmacher Institute is a repeat grantee—it received close to $15 million in 2018.

In 2018 and earlier, STBF also funded liberal advocacy and public policy education groups. In 2018, it gave about $7.9 million to the New Venture Fund, which sponsors and hosts philanthropic projects, including All Above All, an abortion advocacy group co-launched by NNAF. STBF also funds national and local American Civil Liberties Union branches, Media Matters for America, and NEO Philanthropy. We contacted a number of grantees for this article, but they either did not respond or declined to comment.

One of STBF’s most influential contributions to reproductive health access and policy is abortion and contraception-related research, a realm lacking in public funding. Along with research into medication abortion, it made pivotal contributions in many other areas.

Top STBF Grantees, 2003 - 2018

Source: Candid

New Frontiers

STBF played a major role in the rising use of safer and more affordable intrauterine devices (IUDs), which are now about 99% effective. Early IUDs in the 1970s were discovered to be dangerous, but researchers developed more reliable devices during the following decades. After Mirena, developed by the Population Council, was approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration in 2000, STBF sought to increase U.S. IUD use. Less than 2% of American women used the devices in 2002. In 2007, STBF anonymously funded the Contraceptive Choice Project, a research initiative that would influence medical and governmental contraceptive recommendations.

As reported in Bloomberg, STBF gave about $20 million to Washington University, where researchers conducted a study involving close to 10,000 women in St. Louis. In 2010, they reported that when providers offered women a choice of free contraceptive methods, about 75% opted for IUDs and hormonal implants (AKA long-acting reversible contraceptives or LARCs).

In 2011, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists updated its guidelines in support of wider IUD use, referencing these Choice Project findings. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also adjusted its recommendations in 2014, citing the Choice Project, and advising practitioners to introduce women to the most effective contraceptives, including IUDs and other LARCs, first.

Starting in 2007 and 2008, STBF also spent about $100 million to fund provider IUD training and make IUDs accessible in Iowa and Colorado. In Colorado, about half of the funding went directly to the state, which hired and trained clinicians and purchased IUDs to give freely to the public. In 2014, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper reported program results, including a 40% drop in the teen birthrate between 2009 and 2013, and a reduction in the teen abortion rate by more than a third.

And STBF funded (and still funds) the nonprofit Medicines360, which developed a more affordable IUD known as Liletta. As of 2014, about 11.8% of contraceptive users had IUDs, according to Guttmacher.

Influencing the Highest Court

Another demonstration of the power of STBF’s funding came in 2016, when its grantees played key roles in the Supreme Court case Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, which found key elements of Texas’ 2013 law HB2 unconstitutional. The Center for Reproductive Rights argued the case on behalf of Texas clinics, physicians and their patients.

HB2 required abortion clinics to upgrade to surgical-center standards, restricted medication abortion, and banned abortion after 20 weeks, among other changes. It and other laws that impose new abortion restrictions are sometimes called “targeted regulation of abortion provider” (TRAP) laws. The Texas TRAP law closed nearly half of the state clinics, the overall abortion rate fell, and the pressure on remaining facilities led to a 27% increase in second-trimester procedures, which can be more dangerous and expensive.

Research into HB2’s consequences was provided to the high court by the Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TxPEP), a University of Texas-Austin research group that formed in 2011 in response to new abortion restrictions, with funding from STBF. TxPEP researched and wrote a brief on HB2’s measurable negative effects on women and its unconstitutionality, which was referenced in the five-to-three majority ruling. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in his opinion that the new requirements “place a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking a previability abortion, constitute an undue burden on abortion access, and thus violate the Constitution.”

On the other hand, Dr. Randall O’Bannon, education and research director for National Right to Life, questioned the validity of the TxPEP project’s studies. He said, “The research the majority relied upon in [this case] was crafted to protect the interests of the abortion industry with scant attention to the legitimate health and safety issues of Texas women, let alone unborn babies.”

STBF also backs the University of California at San Francisco’s Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH). Tracy Weitz, a former ANSIRH director, now heads up STBF’s domestic program. In 2014, Weitz told ProPublica that clinical research is usually a government arena, “But in the last 10 years, there’s been recognition in the philanthropic community that in order to make progress [on reproductive rights], whether culturally or politically or in the service-delivery arena, there are research questions that we need to answer.”

Both ANSIRH and Guttmacher opted not to comment on philanthropic topics for this article, but did assist us with some general abortion-related questions for our abortion-funding article. We contacted TxPEP as well, but did not receive a response. While STBF often gives anonymously, we did find it listed as a funder of TxPEP’s studies on the research group’s site and on a sponsor list for UCSF’s Global Research Projects, which include some ANSIRH programs.

According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, a 2014 law in Louisiana, Act 620, requires “identical admitting privileges” to HB2, the law deemed unconstitutional in Texas. The Supreme Court scheduled a case relating to Act 620 for March 2020. STBF grantees the Center for Reproductive Rights, ANSHIR and TxPEP have already filed documents with the high court, taking the first steps to respond to this law as they did with Texas HB2.

“The Supreme Court should consider the volume of evidence, as it did when it decided Texas’ law was unconstitutional,” said Dr. Kari White, principal TxPEP investigator and associate professor of sociology and social work.

In recent related news (and a potentially foreboding blow for reproductive rights advocates), in December 2019, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of a Kentucky law that requires doctors to perform and show ultrasounds and play fetal heartbeats to patients before abortions. Then, in early 2020, more than 200 members of Congress sent the high court a brief asking it to uphold the Louisiana law in the spring and consider overturning Roe v. Wade.

Scholarships

STBF’s higher education giving for scholarships and teacher awards are the only funding programs it publicizes. In 2018, it gave schools in Nebraska $40 million for the scholarship program. This is up from about $33 million in 2015. STBF has offered scholarships to Nebraska college students with financial need for more than 50 years. They are given to first-time freshmen who are Nebraska residents and graduates of a Nebraska high school or GED program who plan to attend a Nebraska public college. Regents of the University of Nebraska often receives bigger, multi-million-dollar gifts while community colleges take in scholarship funding in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

STBF also runs the Alice Buffett Outstanding Teacher Awards (named after an aunt of Warren who taught in Omaha Public Schools for more than 35 years). Fifteen of these awards of $10,000 are given annually; this amount has not changed in recent years.

Inside STBF

Some of the key players at STBF we previously identified are still in place, but it also has some new team members. As we mentioned, Susie Buffett, whom we named the second-most powerful woman in U.S. philanthropy in 2014 (just after Melinda Gates), is still board chair, and her ex-husband Allen Greenberg remains president. Susie also controls her own Sherwood Foundation, which gave out more than $200 million in 2018, with a focus on early childhood education in Nebraska and nationally, and on rural and urban community development in the state. Greenberg is an attorney who used to work at Public Citizen, the progressive watchdog group founded by Ralph Nader. After moving to Omaha to run the foundation in 1987, he worked closely with Susie’s mother and earned the respect of the NGOs STBF supported.

Tracy Weitz remains head of U.S. programs. She’s a scholar-practitioner with a Ph.D. in medical sociology and a master’s degree in public administration. She worked for Planned Parenthood early on, and also served as ANSIRH director.

Senait Fisseha, a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan Medical School, is now the director of international programs (a position previously held by Türkiz Gökgöl, until 2015). She was born in Ethiopia and studied international human rights and comparative law, obstetrics and gynecology, and reproductive endocrinology and infertility. According to the bio posted by the University of Michigan, she “advocates for training and capacity-building in contraception and reproductive health services globally.” She previously directed Michigan’s Center for Reproductive Medicine, and was the founding executive director of its Center for International Reproductive Health Training.

Sandra Garcia is director of research and evaluation. She studied population and international health and previously spent 13 years with the Population Council. She has written dozens of peer-reviewed publications on women’s sexual and reproductive rights. According to an announcement of an award she received from Guttmacher in 2007, her research into abortion in Mexico “played an important role” in the country’s decision to legalize first-trimester abortion.

Karen Gluck is a U.S. senior program official. Melissa How is STBF’s secretary and director of grants and finances. Kellie Pickett directs the foundation’s scholarship programs. Multiple other employees can be found by searching LinkedIn for the foundation. We reached out to several STBF staff and board members for this article, but they either did not respond or declined to comment. When we asked Weitz a question about U.S. abortion via email, she directed us to experts at Guttmacher or ANSHIR (whom we had already contacted).

Along with Susan and Peter Buffett, there are currently five other STBF board members listed on its tax forms. Lawyer, professor, author and producer Geoffrey Cowan is one director; he currently holds the Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Alison Cowan is another director, but any relationship to Geoffrey is unclear.

Omaha investor Wallace Weitz is on STBF’s board, as is finance journalist and former Fortune Senior Editor Carol Loomis. She often covered the Buffetts and broke the story of Warren’s plans to give most of his fortune to philanthropy. A 2013 article included this editorial note: “Fortune Senior Editor-at-Large Carol Loomis, who wrote this article, is a longtime friend of Warren Buffett’s, the pro bono editor of his annual letter to shareholders, and a shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway.”

Walt Disney consultant Patty Matson is also an STBF director. She spent close to 25 years as an ABC executive, after working for the Ford and Nixon White Houses, as well as for Omaha congressman John Y. McCollister.

A Closed Book

As we’ve said, STBF does not publicize its reproductive-centric funding or grantmaking processes, and is commonly noted as an anonymous donor by grantees. It’s hard to know how its funding might look if it opened up its grantmaking process to the public. Gretchen Ely, Ph.D., an associate dean and professor of social work at the University at Buffalo who studies reproductive healthcare for vulnerable women, says funders like STBF that give anonymously may overlook “important projects that they would like to fund… since there is no mechanism for applying for their funds, the work of those who are not known to the foundation may potentially go unnoticed.”

While it’s hard to form a deep understanding of the foundation’s inner culture and processes, the 2016 job listing offers some insights:

A hallmark of its culture and approach is to constantly challenge itself and grantees to ‘think big’ but to do so critically and carefully—by questioning, piloting, reflecting, learning, and putting that learning to effective use. The foundation has built an environment in which people are not afraid to fail or change their approach in light of new evidence and information. Investments are seen as partnerships, entered into and executed thoughtfully and with humility.

Humility may reference, in part, the foundation’s preference for giving anonymously for reproductive choice, health and rights. During its early years as the Buffett Foundation, STBF wasn’t so reticent to publicize its support for these issues. Berkshire Hathaway had a corporate giving program that allowed shareholders to choose a recipient for their share of company philanthropy, and the Buffetts commonly sent their large portion to their foundation.

The transition to veiled foundation giving began after Berkshire acquired Pampered Chef, which sent its saleswomen directly into people’s homes. When sales reps were challenged on the job by anti-abortion activists and a boycott was threatened, Pampered Chef’s founder, Doris Christopher, reached out to the Buffetts. In response, they changed strategies, completely ending the shareholder donation program in 2003, and formally drawing a line between their business and philanthropic activities.

“I thought we could tough it through, but we can’t,” Buffett told Alice Schroeder of the decision for her 2008 book, “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life.” “It hurts Doris, and these are her flock.”

In the 2008 interview, former STBF Director of Domestic Programs DeSarno said that after the Pampered Chef uproar, STBF changed the requirements for its grants. “It has to be as ‘anonymous.’ You can’t send out a press release, and you can’t talk about, ‘We got Buffett money,’” she said. More than 10 years later, while we did find STBF named as a funder online in a couple of instances, we did not gain any feedback from the foundation or its grantees—the veiled funding culture appears to persist.

Ely says, “[It] would be beneficial if more donors would emphasize their philanthropy around abortion and reproductive rights and justice, in general.” She says STBF is “well-positioned to weather any criticism that would be directed toward” their funding. “They have the opportunity to take a real leadership role in destigmatizing support for abortion and reproductive healthcare, which could lead to more philanthropy in this area from others who look to [them] as philanthropic leaders.”