By Jonathan Stempel
(Reuters) – Warren Buffett plans to hold his 21st, and final, charity lunch to raise money for Glide, a San Francisco nonprofit that serves the poor, homeless, and people battling substance abuse.
Glide said on Monday that the auction begins on June 12 on eBay and will conclude on June 17.
The winner and as many as seven guests will dine with Buffett at the Smith & Wollensky steakhouse in Manhattan.
Buffett, 91, the billionaire chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway Inc, has raised more than $34.2 million for Glide through lunch auctions that began in 2000.
Past winners include cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun, who paid a record $4.57 million in 2019.
Others have included Greenlight Capital hedge fund manager David Einhorn and money manager Ted Weschler, who won two auctions and later became a Berkshire portfolio manager.
No auctions were held in 2020 and 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was not immediately clear why this year’s is the last.
“Mr. Buffett’s treasured friendship with Glide will continue, but 2022 will be the grand finale of this particular event,” Glide said in a statement. Its president, Karen Hanrahan, called Buffett’s friendship and generosity “invaluable.”
Berkshire did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Buffett’s first wife Susan, who died in 2004, introduced him to Glide after volunteering for the charity.
Glide’s services include free meals, shelter, HIV and hepatitis C tests, job training, and children’s daycare and after-school programs, among others.
“It makes a difference, and it translates into human beings finding that there is hope in life and that something better is there,” Buffett said in 2019.
Buffett is also giving away most of his wealth, including more than $41.6 billion so far, to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and four family charities.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
