Gates, Buffett Propose Billionaire Giveaway to Charity

More than three dozen billionaires, including well-known philanthropists like David Rockefeller and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York

and less familiar big donors like Lorry I. Lokey, founder of Business Wire,

have promised at least half of their fortunes to charity,

joining a program that Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett started in June to encourage other wealthy people to give.

More than three dozen billionaires, including well-known philanthropists like David Rockefeller and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York

and less familiar big donors like Lorry I. Lokey, founder of Business Wire,

have promised at least half of their fortunes to charity,

joining a program that Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett started in June to encourage other wealthy people to give.

“During even the Depression’s worst years, my parents gave money — about 8 percent of their annual income of $2,200,”

Mr. Lokey wrote in a letter posted on the Web site of the program, the Giving Pledge.

“I remember saying to my mother that we can’t afford that. But she said we have to share with others. I learned from that to share.”

The pledge has been a matter of some debate in philanthropic and nonprofit circles,

with some experts dismissing it as a publicity stunt

and others predicting that it would produce a flood of new money to support nonprofit groups.

The program has predicted that it will draw $600 billion into philanthropy —

or about twice the estimated total amount given by Americans last year —

although in a telephone interview this month, Mr. Buffett acknowledged that some of the money would have been donated anyway.

“It’s not like all or half of the money represented is added money,” he said, “but some of it is added.”

He said he thought the real value of the pledge was found in the example that it set and in the sentiments expressed in the letters posted on the Web site.

Perhaps the biggest surprise on the list was Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle,

who became the bad boy of philanthropy after he withdrew a $115 million gift from Harvard

in protest over the resignation of Lawrence H. Summers as president.

In a brief note addressed “To Whom It May Concern,” Mr. Ellison disclosed that he had already assigned 95 percent of his wealth to a trust

and noted that he had already given hundreds of millions of dollars away for medical research and education.

“Until now, I have done this giving quietly — because I have long believed that charitable giving is a personal and private matter,” Mr. Ellison wrote.

“So why am I going public now?

Warren Buffett personally asked me to write this letter because he said I would be ‘setting an example’ and ‘influencing others’ to give.

I hope he’s right.”

Mr. Buffett said that the number of people who had agreed to sign on was at the high end of his expectations.

He said some people who did not agree to sign the pledge were planning to give away most of their wealth

but did not want to draw attention to those plans.

Some went on “a tirade” about the government and rising taxes, Mr. Buffett said — declining, of course, to name them.

“A few got into that, and there are some that have a dynastic attitude toward wealth,” he said in this article from the New York Times.

“That tends to be the case where they themselves inherited this money and maybe feel some sort of intergenerational compact about it.”

Whle we’ve been critical of St. Warren for lots of reasons, he’s certainly right that it’s usually the people who have inherited – rather than made –

their money that are the most miserly with it,

as generations of trust-fund babies have proven all too often 😉 .