(Originally
appeared in the August 15, 2004 edition of the Century City News)
By Courtney Ryan Fitzgerald
There’s a lot of money in this town. And money isn’t just about power. It’s about responsibility.
“Century City has a higher concentration of financial
advisors, attorneys, and CPAs than any other city I can think of,” says Mary
Buffett, mother to the heirs of Omaha sage, Warren Buffett. Ms. Buffett, author of Buffettology, along with Omninet Capital president, Ben Nazarian,
and Lathem & Watkins’ Barry Sanders, will speak at the Century City Plaza
on September 22nd during a lunch and panel discussion about “Using
Wealth to Effect Social Change.” As Ms. Buffett indicates, this town at the
summit of the fifth largest economy in the world certainly has the ability to
exercise “powerful influence.” The hundreds
projected to attend this power lunch will have plenty on their plates, indeed.
Warren Buffett’s ex-daughter-in-law certainly knows the
curious nuances of philanthropy. “When I was married, all of the family would have a chance
to review various requests of the foundation each year. It was an educational experience,” she says. “It
was always impressive that the foundation’s gifts were specifically focused on
helping abortion rights and other population control groups, universities, teachers,
students, and, most recently, hospitals.”
It’s a bit risky for high-profile
billionaires to give money to controversial causes like abortion rights. But business can be risky by definition. Likewise, sometimes with philanthropy, too: the
greater the risk, the greater the reward.
“Using the venture capital
model,” explains Brian Weiner, founder of the Law & Business Council and
originator of September’s panel discussion, “venture philanthropy breaks away from the traditional charitable
giving model in that people are now funding new research and scientific
experiments aimed at receiving measurable returns on civic investment. This leads to much greater breakthroughs in
the effort to find a cure or solution to a particular social problem.”
September’s luncheon will focus in
part on the future of the next generation of philanthropists and their finding
these social solutions. What risks will
Warren Buffett’s granddaughters take with their inheritance? “They are
the future leaders of the community,” underscores Weiner, “they are the ones
who will be sitting on the boards and making the decisions and having the
ability to do a tremendous amount of good for the community with both their
wealth and their influence.”
If generations X, Y, and Z are ill-prepared, where will
their money go? “Family foundations are only required to give a minimum of 5%
of the total assets to charity,” clarifies Weiner, “they can keep it literally
sitting in the family foundation forever.
They don’t have to give it.
Knowing this, a lot of community foundations and local charities are
very concerned about getting on the radar screen of these next generations.”
According to Ms. Buffett, there’s a certain community
accountability that comes with affluence.
No one lives in a vacuum. “The wrong thing would be to ignore our interdependence,”
she says. “For a person with privilege, it is his or her responsibility to
realize the capacity one has to create change.”
The same goes for the corporate
world, too. Rather than focusing on the
notion of a “supply chain,” corporations should focus on the greater good for
the greater number result that the notion of a “value chain” provides
environmentally, socially, and in all points between.
“I believe that people more
fortunate than most have a certain responsibility to our planet and other
people to create conditions that allow for sustainability,” continues Ms.
Buffett. “As the Great Law of The Iroquois Confederacy states: ‘In our every
deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven
generations.’”
So, how does this particular
Buffett choose to be philanthropic, exactly?
She’s an ambassador for Greenstar, a non-profit providing solar power
and e-commerce to developing countries.
She hosts benefit art showings. She purchases products made by
responsible companies and teaches her children to care for their
neighbors. “Whether
that means visiting a local nursing home or gathering trash on the street,”
says Buffett, “any small or large task is contributing to a better world.”
In today’s tightfisted
governmental climate, philanthropy has even become crucial, if not essential,
to society’s conservation. “It is a sad
state of affairs when our health care system fails to meet people’s basic
requirements,” says Ms. Buffett. Where
the government gaps, private individuals have to step in to make up the
difference, like Warren Buffett recently did by giving $6 million to UCSF for
recruiting new faculty and exploring novel therapies in the Department of
Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery at the Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Private support of this kind is critically
important to the long term success of this and many other programs,” says Ms.
Buffett.
Are people of the next generation in tune enough with
today’s social issues and political misgivings to follow the Mary Buffett
model? Or could philanthropy fall by the
wayside, while civilization gets Scrooged into regression? September 22nd
is about making sure that doesn’t happen.
