About
Established in 1999
Established in 1999, The Howard G. Buffett Foundation’s mission is to catalyze transformational change to improve the standard of living and quality of life, particularly for the world’s most impoverished and marginalized populations. We use our resources to improve conditions and create change in the most difficult circumstances and geographies.
We invest our funding in four main areas: food security, conflict mitigation, combatting human trafficking, and public safety.
The Foundation continues to make smaller investments in cheetah and mountain gorilla conservation, where we have historical knowledge and relationships.
The Foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals, and we typically do not provide general operating support. December 31, 2045, is the final dissolution of the Foundation’s assets.
Leadership
Howard G. Buffett
Chairman & CEO
Howard G. Buffett is a farmer, photographer, businessman, sworn law enforcement officer, former elected official and Chairman and CEO of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, one of the largest private charitable foundations in the United States. The Foundation invests primarily in global food security, conflict mitigation, combatting human trafficking and public safety.
Mr. Buffett farms his family farm in central Illinois and oversees a family farm in Nebraska. He oversees multiple foundation-operated research farms in Arizona, Illinois and Nebraska; two ranches in Arizona; a ranch and farm in New Mexico; and a farm in Texas.
Mr. Buffett served as Sheriff of Macon County, Illinois from September 2017 through November 2018 after serving as an Auxiliary Deputy for five years in Macon County and Shelby County in Illinois and serving in volunteer roles in the Christian County Sheriff’s Office in Illinois and Cochise County, Arizona.
Mr. Buffett currently serves on the corporate board of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. and has served on a number of Fortune 500 boards. He has held several senior corporate executive positions; he was elected to serve as a Commissioner on the Douglas County Board in Nebraska from 1989-1992; and he served 20 years on the Commission on Presidential Debates.
He has been honored over the years for his leadership and contributions to agriculture, conservation, philanthropy and journalism, including receiving the highest honors bestowed on a foreign citizen by the governments of Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador, Rwanda and Ukraine for his work in each country.
Mr. Buffett has traveled to over 150 countries and authored fifteen books on conservation, wildlife, and the human condition, including two New York Times bestsellers, 40 Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World and Our 50-State Border Crisis: How the Mexican Border Fuels the Drug Epidemic Across America. He is the executive producer of three award-winning documentary films: Virunga, an Academy Award-nominated film about Africa’s oldest national park; Path of the Panther, an Emmy-winning documentary about efforts to protect the endangered Florida panther; and The River and The Wall; a film documenting how construction of physical barriers impacts life in the Texas-Mexico border region.
View Howard’s writing and photography work.
Ann Kelly Bolten
President
Ann Kelly Bolten is President of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. She supports the Foundation’s grantmaking strategy and philanthropic investments.
Prior to joining the Foundation full-time in 2011, Ann consulted the Foundation on its water and food security grantmaking as a partner and co-founder of Global Philanthropy Group (GPG). At GPG, she worked with corporations, high-net worth individuals and celebrity clients to better align their core competencies and philanthropic investment to maximize impact on a wide-range of social and policy issues.
Before GPG, Ann was a partner at Lake Partners Strategy Consultants, providing management consulting to a range of for-profit and non-profit clients on strategy, operations, public policy and investments.
Ann worked in private sector strategy consulting for a wide-range of for-profit and non-profit clients for nearly a decade before joining Lake.
Ann graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University and received her MBA with distinction from the Harvard Business School.
Foundation Affiliated Entities
The Foundation at times utilizes affiliate organizations to manage certain large, multi-year commitments or when supporting work that requires direct operations. Our goal is to: (1) manage the Foundation’s future obligations responsibly since we receive our grantmaking funds annually and not from an established endowment; (2) limit the Foundation’s liability when supporting innovative approaches to addressing the kinds of difficult, intractable issues we focus on; (3) ensure the Foundation’s operations reflect our focus on grantmaking and not on direct operations; (4) have in place legally separated assets that can be easily donated in the future; (5) preserve a mechanism for reclaiming funds in the event circumstances change and the funds cannot be used to achieve our original intent. Our most important affiliate organizations are as follows:
Nature Conservation Trust manages the Foundation’s long-term commitments in Africa. It is utilized to ensure we have funding available to meet future obligations but maintain control over that funding until it is needed by the grantee, especially when the grantee is not a U.S. 501(c)3 or is a government entity.
Sequoia Farm Foundation holds the Foundation’s research farms and ranches in Illinois, Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico as well as the employees who operate and manage those properties.
The Center to Combat Human Trafficking was created to provide multi-year funding for pilot projects in which collaborators working to address human trafficking in the United States are expected to test ambitious, creative and new approaches.
Fundación para la Paz y la Seguridad was established to manage multi-year commitments to build infrastructure in communities in Latin America emerging from conflict, typically in collaboration with slow-moving and ever-changing local and national governments.
The Ukraine Foundation complements the Foundation’s grantmaking work in Ukraine. As a Ukrainian organization, it can work more easily with local contractors and local organizations that are not established as U.S. nonprofit organizations.
ICAT Training Foundation includes the training facility and funding for operations to train law enforcement agencies in a de-escalation training program called ICAT, developed by the Police Executive Research Forum, who leases the facility. When not in use for ICAT, the facilities are used by local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies for other training purposes.
Public Safety Training Foundation (PSTF) owns and operates land and buildings leased to the Illinois State Police and the Illinois Department of Corrections. The State of Illinois also uses the facilities to ensure new police recruits receive best-in-class, practical training to meet the modern-day needs of law enforcement personnel and first responders. PSTF also works to educate the public about the demands on and decision-making processes of law enforcement personnel and improve community relations between law enforcement and the public they serve.
Farmers Youth Education Foundation owns the land and building that is leased to the Decatur Public Schools Foundation to establish the FFA Agriculture Education Center.
