Warren Buffett is considered one of the most successful investors of all time. As of 2025 Forbes ranked him as the sixth-richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth exceeding $150 billion. But one of the great ironies of this great capitalist fortune is that it is used to oppose capitalism while promoting and advocating for left-leaning policies instead.
The NoVo Foundation was created and presided over Peter Buffett—Warren’s youngest son—and Peter’s wife, Jennifer. It has been a consistent and generous donor to stridently left-wing nonprofits. In 2023 NoVo gave $250,000 to the Center for Economic Democracy, which advocates for moving the U.S economy towards a “post-capitalist model;” $600,000 to the New Economy Coalition, which has called for creating “real alternatives to capitalism;” and more than $1.3 million to Democracy Collaborative, which advocates for “Community Wealth Building (CWB)” in order to establish an “equitable and sustainable political-economic system.”
In May 2025, Buffett announced he would step down as the CEO of the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate by the end of 2025. Despite his move away from the spotlight, Buffett has also seen members of his own family create their own investment and philanthropic empires that have shaped federal and international policy and grantmaking the world over. NoVo is one example.
Peter Buffett has been a musician, composer and television producer. He and his wife serve as the co-presidents of NoVo and co-chairs of the board. Jennifer Buffett has been involved with philanthropic efforts within Milwaukee, Wisconsin, since 1997 as well as working as a board member of V-Day, the feminist advocacy group founded and operated by Vagina Monologues author Eve Ensler.
But the real money behind NoVo came from Warren himself. In 2006, while still serving as head of the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate, he donated 350,000 shares of company stock, valued at a total of $1 billion, and used it to create and fund foundations for himself and his heirs. According to the initial pledge, Warren wrote to his son Peter, “Focus the new funds and your energy on a relatively few activities in which NoVo can make an important difference…[p]ay attention to your home community but favor a broader view.”
According to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Berkshire stock has also been used to finance the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, operated by daughter Susan A Buffett; the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, founded by son Howard; and the Sherwood Foundation, also chaired by daughter Susan.
For the NoVo Foundation, alone there has been a consistent pattern: in 2020 NoVo received nearly $16 million in stocks from Berkshire Hathaway from their father Warren, while in 2022 it received another 300,000 Class B shares in Berkshire Hathaway stock from Buffett, This was only one part of $750 million in stocks that was donated to NoVo as well as other left-of-center foundations that year including the other family-oriented foundations. As recently as November 2024, NoVo received another 200,000 shares, with an estimated value of $144 million.
His planned retirement hints that Warren Buffett is preparing to leave the Buffett financial juggernaut to his children. A 2024 story by the Associated Press (AP) revealed that he planned to turn his fortune into a charitable trust that would be run by his family following his death.
But a stipulation of the trust requires that any annual gifts towards the foundations operated by his family must give away or donate whatever they receive within one year of their donation. The roots of this extend back to 2010, when Warren co-founded The Giving Pledge, alongside Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his then-wife Melinda French Gates. The Pledge itself is a philanthropic agreement for signatory billionaires to give away at least 50 percent of their wealth to charity or through their wills. As of July 2025, the estimated combined net worth of the signatories exceeded $1 trillion.
ESG support
[NoVo donated] $1,900,000 to Kashif Incubator, a student media project that believes the Unites States is “Stolen Land. Stolen People”
NoVo has helped support a large number of left-of-center and similarly aligned efforts. Many of these fit within the left-wing Environmental, Social and corporate Governance (ESG) policy agenda.
In 2016, NoVo donated roughly $100,000 to the National LGBTQ Task Force, the oldest LGBT advocacy organization in the United States. The group has advocated for increased LGBT protections and previously called for ensuring “marginalized people” such as “low income” and “people of color” were included on the annual census.
NoVo’s grantmaking has also gone towards LGBT-oriented financial projects. During the four years through 2021, NoVo gave the Allied Media Projects’ (AMP) “Create, Connect, Transform” project $3 million to fund “social justice, media, art, and technology innovations” in the city of Detroit, Michigan.
Another $300,000 went towards the “Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project “(BLMP), founded by the Transgender Law Center, that alleges law enforcement and national immigration laws specifically target “Black LGBT migrants.” BLMP also received funding in 2017 from the “Soros Justice Fellowship” operated by Open Society Foundations (OSF), the flagship philanthropy of billionaire George Soros.
NoVo has also supported nonprofits that advocate in favor of abortion as well as the expansion of contraceptive protections both locally and abroad.
Both the Global Fund for Women and the International Planned Parenthood Federation have received NoVo funding ($250,000 and nearly $300,000 respectfully) towards advocacy campaigns to change or expand abortion access around the world. Global Fund, for example, has promoted passage of pro-abortion legislation in Chile.
Locally, NoVo gave nearly $2 million to Equality Now, an advocacy initiative that supports the passage of a “Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). The ERA would enshrine LGBT protections as well as protections from discrimination “on account of sex” into the U.S Constitution along with increased abortion access.
It should be noted that in 2020 the NoVo Foundation announced that it would no longer be operating an “Initiative to Advance Adolescent Girls’ Rights” and that same year also announced it would not longer donate to groups advocating for protections from “gender-based violence.”
NoVo has also been generous to lefty Native American causes. According to a 2024 report by the Associated Press (AP), Peter Buffett was involved in the composition of music for the award-winning feature film Dances with Wolves released in 1990 and starring Kevin Costner. In addition, Peter composed the score for “500 Nations,” a tv miniseries that premiered on the CBS network in 1995 which discussed the Native American tribes and communities found in North and Central America.
In 2023, NoVo donated more than $4 million towards several Native American advocacy groups including the Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy, the First Nations Development Institute, the Resources Legacy Fund, and the Seventh Generation Fund. These groups have advocated for the creation and maintenance of environmental and weather-dependent energy projects on Native American reservations, as well as projects to support international indigenous communities.
In 2023 alone, the organization donated $200,000 to media outlet group Democracy Now Productions, $200,000 to climate advocacy organization Earthjustice, $1,000,000 to the environmental funding group Global Greengrants Fund, $1,900,000 to Kashif Incubator, a student media project that believes the Unites States is “Stolen Land. Stolen People;” $500,000 to feminist grant maker group MADRE for its “Advancing Climate Justice” project; and $750,000 to advocacy group Thousand Currents for the purpose of funding development projects in third-world countries.
Groups promoting left-leaning immigration policy, including local organizations advocating for decreased restrictions on undocumented migrants, were also well represented in NoVo’s grant reports.
NoVo partnered with several organizations including the Florida Immigrant Coalition (FLIC) to kickstart the “Radical Hope Florida” project. This was a community initiative intended to promote “Healing Justice and Radical Self-Care.” During the 2016 election cycle, the FLIC organized a get-out-the-vote (GOTV) campaign with Democratic Party groups in several American cities with to increase election turnout. Other partners of the initiative included the Movement for Black Lives (MBL), the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), and the Water Protector Legal Collective.
Other immigration policy-focused NoVo grants in 2016 included $107,000 to the Adhikaar for Human Rights and Social Justice, which advocates for Nepali communities within New York State; and $15,000 to Human Rights First, which has advocated for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Military detention facility.
An earlier donation came in 2018 when NoVo gave $2.5 million towards the Center for Justice, a think tank based on Columbia University’s campus and was, at the time, operated by Kathy Boudin, a former militant of the terrorist organization Weather Underground. Boudin herself was convicted of murder in the 1981 robbery of a Brinks truck in Nyack, New York.
Left-leaning economics and reparations
According to Tablet, local nonprofits that had received funding from NoVo were given unofficial rules regarding grants such as “you don’t discuss your grants from NoVo, you don’t criticize NoVo in public, and you don’t speak ill of the Buffetts…”
As noted at the outset of this report, NoVo has also placed a particular focus on funding opposition to free enterprise and supporting for left-leaning economic policies.
A $500,000 donation in 2016 went to the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), which has funded advocacy campaigns such as “fair workweek” legislation and minimum wage increases.
That same year, Demos, a left-of-center policy advocacy think tank, received roughly $200,000 from NoVo. Amelia Warren Tyagi, daughter of U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), was previously the chair of the Demos board.
NoVo has also funded projects associated with the Black Lives Matter advocacy movement as well as the affiliated Movement for Black Lives (MBL) coalition which act to coordinate related activism for the Black Lives Matter movement.
One grant was for MBL’s “Electoral Justice Project,” created to increase political engagement within African-American communities by using platforms such as “reparations” for African-American communities, divesting from fossil fuel-based sources of energy, and reduced spending towards the United States military. On a related point: In March 2020 NoVo’s Facebook page reposted an article by the left-of-center Communities for Just School Fund, in which the latter advertised a series of “anti-oppressive, anti-racist homeschool curriculum ideas and resources for families impacted by closures caused by the coronavirus.”
Finally, the NoVo Foundation donated $3 million in 2019 to the Movement Strategy Center (MSC), an Oakland-based left-of-center organization that has advocated for “redistributing resources back into communities…while recognizing the exploitative systems from which wealth is derived.” The MSC was one of several organizations to form the HEAL Food Alliance in 2017, which has also advocated for ending the “tipped minimum wage,” the practice of incarcerated individuals working on penal farms for food production, and deportations of illegal immigrants.
Since Peter Buffett and his wife Jeniffer moved to the town of Kingston, New York, the NoVo Foundation has taken increased steps in investing within the community.
According to a 2021 article by Tablet Magazine, NoVo Foundation had become the primary funder behind multiple businesses and industries within the town and Ulster country, including the “local news media and radio station, a local printed currency, a 1,500-acre farm and produce distribution center, a food co-op, a museum, a think tank, a mutual aid network, a health care network, a hospital, the Kingston Land Bank, the YMCA, the community center, and dozens of nonprofits that are working on all imaginable forms of community projects.”
Locals even began to criticize NoVo for failing to provide transparency regarding where its funding was going and a refusal to solicit public input on where funds should go. According to Tablet, local nonprofits that had received funding from NoVo were given unofficial rules regarding grants such as “you don’t discuss your grants from NoVo, you don’t criticize NoVo in public, and you don’t speak ill of the Buffetts — lest you jeopardize your funding.”
In 2014 NoVo reportedly bought a local farm for $13 million and rebranded it as “Hudson Valley Farm Hub” to teach and advise farmers on how to grow organic crops. They also allowed Local Economies Project, a fiscally-sponsored project of the left-of-center New World Foundation, to take over management of the property. The then-director of the Local Economies Project, Bob Dandrew, was the previous executive director of the NoVo Foundation.
Radio Kingston, a media project funded by NoVo, was allegedly “hosted by employees of NoVo-funded organizations interviewing the employees of other NoVo-funded organizations about the projects and campaigns they run that are funded by NoVo.” In June 2021, the Kingston Wire had its funding from Radio Kingston pulled due to an alleged lack of stories on climate change and failure to provide positive stories on NoVo.
At the time, NoVo account for a third of Kingston Wire’s funding.
The Wire had previously investigated potential financial links between the town and the NoVo-funded Kingston City Land Bank, where then-Mayor Steve Noble sat on the board of directors. NoVo had invested in a local currency, the “Hudson Valley Current.” Locals complained that the only businesses that accepted the Current, such as workshops and consultants, did not have physical locations, making the alternative money “completely useless.”
Despite stepping down from his position with Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett’s money and influence still extends deep into the philanthropic world. The giving pattern already established by the NoVo Foundation demonstrates that the Buffett heirs, such as his son Peter, will continue on a funding left-of-center advocacy and investments. If Peter and his siblings will be seen as the new faces of the Buffett family legacy, their past behavior doesn’t indicate the likelihood that they will step out of their father’s shadow.
