Wealthy Donors

Warren Buffett's early childhood house sold for a premium price, and it's headed for a charitable use.

That's because the buyer is John Morgan, the Minneapolis businessman who in past auctions paid $100,000 for a portrait of Buffett and $210,000 for Buffett's wallet to benefit Girls Inc., Morgan's favorite charity.

"I wanted to make sure it didn't fall into the wrong hands," Morgan said of the house. "Now the fun begins."

Warren Buffett, who is urging fellow billionaires to commit most of their wealth to philanthropy, gave away stock valued at about $1.5 billion in his annual gift to the foundation established by Bill Gates.

The donation of 19.3 million Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A) Class B shares was made Thursday, according to a filing.

Buffett has pledged the majority of his holdings to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and to charities run by his three children and one named after his first wife, Susan Thompson Buffett, who died in 2004.

Based on recent analysis, Forbes has identified what looks like a pretty elite club: 19 people who have already donated at least $1 billion each to charities or foundations. That is five more than Forbes found two years ago. More than two-thirds of these philanthropists (13 to be exact) are from the U.S. and all but one is a self-made entrepreneur.

Topping the list is Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the most generous person on the planet in dollar terms, having gifted $28 billion to his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

A seven-figure gift to the Detroit Institute of Arts from former General Motors group vice president Roy Roberts and his wife, Maureen, has put a spotlight on the relative dearth of high-profile African-American philanthropists, Crain's Detroit Business and the Detroit Free Press report.

In recognition of the first seven-figure contribution to DIA by an African American, the museum will rename one of its galleries after the couple.

Wealthy people plan to increase their philanthropy to the levels at which they were giving before the recession, a new survey says. Forty-eight percent of the ultra-wealthy, or those with $5 million or more in investible assets, plan to give more this year, as do 38 percent of those with $1 million to just under $5 million, and 38 percent of those with $500,000 to just under $1 million, according to the 7th annual Wealth and Values Survey Investors' Outlook from PNC Wealth Management.

A number of wealthy philanthropists are making bold demands on schools as a condition of giving.

John Allison, former chairman of bank holding company BB&T Corp., admires author Ayn Rand so much that he devised a strategy to spread her principles on U.S. campuses. Allison, working through the BB&T Charitable Foundation, gives schools grants of as much as $2 million if they agree to create a course on capitalism and make Rand’s masterwork, “Atlas Shrugged,” required reading.

Faculty at several schools that have accepted Allison’s terms are protesting, saying donors shouldn’t have the power to set curriculum to pursue their political agendas.

On Monday afternoon, the W. P. Carey Foundation plans to announce that it will give $30 million to the University of Maryland School of Law, which is in Baltimore. It will be renamed the Francis King Carey School of Law, after Mr. Carey’s grandfather, an 1880 graduate.

In a sign that giving by wealthy people has recovered from the recession, the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund reported that contributions in the first quarter of this year reached $269-million—the second largest first-quarter total in 20 years and a 25 percent increase in the number of donations over the same time in 2010.

The Fidelity fund also reported that donors gave charities $293-million in grants from their accounts. That was another 20-year quarterly record and an increase of 8 percent.

Initiatives such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is backed by the Microsoft founder and Warren Buffet, are an effort by some of the richest people in the world to ensure that their wealth is channelled into poverty and disease alleviation, and this gap narrows. And the giving back theme is spreading rapidly across Asia as well, with some of Asia's richest, such as Li Ka-shing, following suit with their own eponymous foundations.

San Diego philanthropist Conrad Prebys is giving the San Diego Zoo $15 million to launch a major redesign of its big cat and koala areas. This gift, announced Sunday afternoon, follows Prebys’ 2007 donation of $10.1 million to revamp the polar bear plunge and elephant care center.

Not only is this new pledge the largest single gift in the history of the Zoo, but CEO Doug Myers said Prebys is also the largest single donor to the Zoo at over $25 million. (In 2004 Joan Kroc bequeathed $10 million to the Zoo.)