Giving
The Buffett Foundation does not accept unsolicited requests, preferring instead to seek out worthy recipients on its own.
Of the $17.6 million that the Buffett Foundation donated in the fiscal year ended June 30, 1999, nearly $3.8 million went to Planned Parenthood, among its top contributors. It also involves itself directly at the clinic level.
International Projects Assistance Services (IPAS), based in Carrboro, N.C., manufactures a handheld suction pump used in developing countries to initiate abortions. The Buffett Foundation has backed IPAS for years. Its 1999 contribution of $2.5 million is part of a five-year, $20 million commitment that will enable IPAS to double its capacity.
Currently, the Foundation provides grants to a large range of US and a few international organisations, including the Willows Foundation in Turket (€2.3 million), the World Food Programme in Italy (€800,000), Marie Stopes International in the UK (€571,000); and Grupo de Informacion en Reproduccion Elegida in Mexico (€196,000).
By 2008, the Foundation had nearly $4 billion in assets. In 2007, Omaha's Building Bright Futures initiative promised financial support to low-income students in the area who wanted to attend college. But the Buffett program is offering help across Nebraska. For years, the foundation capped the scholarship at about 100 students. Starting with the 2007-08 school year, the foundation lifted that cap. 770 students—including 400 new recipients this fall—held a Buffett scholarship. The foundation granted nearly $2.4 million during the 2007-08 year. Susie Buffett said she hopes the number of scholarship recipients, particularly students from the Omaha area, increases significantly next year.
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Famous quotes containing the word giving:
“Knowledge being to be had only of visible and certain truth, error is not a fault of our knowledge, but a mistake of our judgment, giving assent to that which is not true.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
“People run away from the name subsidy. It is a subsidy. I am not afraid to call it so. It is paid for the purpose of giving a merchant marine to the whole country so that the trade of the whole country will be benefitted thereby, and the men running the ships will of course make a reasonable profit.... Unless we have a merchant marine, our navy if called upon for offensive or defensive work is going to be most defective.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“All religions have honored the beggar. For he proves that in a matter at the same time as prosaic and holy, banal and regenerative as the giving of alms, intellect and morality, consistency and principles are miserably inadequate.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)