Giving Pledge Signers On Why The 15-Year-Old Group Still Matters
Forbes Daily Briefing
Forbes
4.6 • 12 Ratings
🗓️ 3 May 2025
⏱️ 4 minutes
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Summary
Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates teamed up in 2010 to form the Giving Pledge to encourage more of the super wealthy to publicly commit to donating the bulk of their fortunes to charity. Fifteen years later, Buffett is 94, the Gates couple is divorced and newcomers are dwindling. Still, it has its believers.
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| 0:00.0 | Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Saturday, May 3rd. |
| 0:04.7 | Today on Forbes, giving pledge signers on why the 15-year-old group still matters. |
| 0:12.0 | Marie Dodgeville, a former hospice nurse in the San Francisco Bay Area, freely admits that she knew |
| 0:17.3 | nothing about charitable giving, until 2020. That was the turning point. In September |
| 0:23.3 | that year, software firm Snowflake, where her husband, Benoit Dodgeville, as a co-founder, went public. |
| 0:30.6 | With the stock soaring, the couple instantly became billionaires. Not long afterward, Marie, |
| 0:36.4 | now 58 years old, decided to become a full-time philanthropist, |
| 0:40.7 | working to give away their suddenly huge fortune to causes her family cares about. She explained |
| 0:46.0 | that she's concerned about threats to the Earth's climate and the reduction of foreign aid to |
| 0:50.4 | help HIV patients. She tells Forbes, quote, the most important thing for me was to act quickly. For me, the urgency is now. It was not in 10 |
| 0:59.1 | years or even in two years. The Giving Pledge has been a welcoming forum for the kind of collaborative |
| 1:05.5 | philanthropy that Dodgeville prioritizes. Her latest collaboration is an initiative announced last Monday called |
| 1:12.3 | the Beginnings Fund, a $500 million five-year commitment with the Gates Foundation, the UAE's |
| 1:18.7 | Mohamed bin Zayed Foundation for Humanity, and several other donors to prevent 300,000 avoidable |
| 1:24.7 | newborn and maternal deaths in sub-Saharan Africa, working in conjunction with |
| 1:29.3 | countries' ministries of health. As the Giving Pledge turns 15 this year, Forbes spoke with |
| 1:35.4 | Dodgeville and four other members of the pledge about why they joined, what they've learned, |
| 1:40.1 | and what more they'd like to see happen. Since the Giving Pledge launched in August 2010 with |
| 1:45.5 | 40 members, including many couples, its ranks have grown to a current 245 pleasures. |
| 1:52.1 | What started as a group of U.S. philanthropists now counts members from 30 countries, including |
| 1:57.3 | China, India, and Indonesia. It's not for everyone. The 245 members account for just |
| 2:04.0 | 8% of the world's 3,028 billionaires on Forbes's latest annual list. In recent years, |
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