Philanthropists Should Limit Their Focus to Causes They Understand, Buffetts Say

Howard G. Buffett, son of Warren Buffett, and his son, Howard W. Buffett, have written a new book that discusses their philanthropy—and their concerns as both farmers and donors about society’s failure to adequately feed the poor. The two men discussed Forty Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World with The Chronicle:

Why 40 chances?

Howard G. Buffett: I buy all my farm equipment from Sloan Implement. Ten or 12 years ago, they had a school set up that they called Planter’s School so you could learn how to plant better. The speaker started out saying, “You guys are going about this all wrong.”

He said if you look at how most kids get into farming, their dad will let them try and learn it. By the time you get the opportunity and let your son or daughter start planting crops for your farm, it’s usually about 40 seasons.

If you have 40 years and you say what you want to get done, there’s a beginning and an end. It meant I had to think about what I was doing, how I was doing it, why I was doing it, and could I do it better?

You quote the agronomist Joe DeVries: “The development industry is the only industry I know that over time can get more stupid.” Why don’t aid programs work?

HGB: My dad has always used this term “circle of competence.” He always jokes how most people’s circles aren’t all that big, and he’s right.

Part of the problem in philanthropy is too many people try to do too many things they don’t understand.

I’ve been to over 50 countries in Africa and I’ve talked to hundreds and hundreds of farmers. Every country is different. Many farmers have different problems.

We don’t do things in health and we don’t do things in education because that would take me another lifetime to learn. I stay focused on things I understand or can learn.

You can’t believe the amount of people who are setting policy and try to tell people how to do things who have never set foot on a farm.

I wouldn’t any more want to walk into a hospital and have a doctor who says “Yes, I read about how to operate on your heart in this book, don’t worry” than I would want to have some politician who has never been on a farm or involved in agriculture who says “I read about this and I think this is the best policy.” It doesn’t translate that easily.

Why has change been slow to improve aid programs?

Howard W. Buffett: One thing we’ve spent a lot of time looking at is where can our philanthropic dollars that should be able to take the greatest risk go into places where others aren’t operating, whether it’s in areas of conflict or post-conflict, or areas where other funders don’t want to go, or nonprofits have a hard time raising money for because the perceived risk is high.

As a foundation, we don’t have donors we have to answer to. We’re able to take the risks that others aren’t.

What can philanthropy do differently?

HGB: Too many people try to be all things to all people, which is a mistake. It also means we aren’t willing to admit our mistakes, we aren’t willing to talk about our failures.

You have to be willing to fail, take risks, and when you fail, you talk about it. You tell people why it didn’t work, so they don’t do the same thing or you get different ideas.

When we fail at things on the farm, we’re thinking about how to solve the problem.

Foundations are different than public charities. A lot of times everybody gets grouped into the same bucket. We have the greatest tools of any nonprofit because we have more flexibility, we can be more responsive, and take more risk.

The problem with standard NGOs is they have to show some kind of success. It’s this vicious cycle of, I’ve got to look good, I’ve got to present the positive side because I have to raise more money and make my donors happy, and I want to build my organization. There is this inherent conflict in philanthropy. Donors have to change their mind-set. Donors drive a lot of this.

We ask our partners what can we do differently. We also tell them what we don’t like, what we think should be different, what our goals are, but we have to listen to them, too. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve focused on having six to seven strong partners rather than have 30 of them because we have to build a relationship with those partners and we have to trust them.

What’s next for your foundation?

HGB: We’re starting an aggressive antipoaching program that we may have a number of unusual partners to work with, and we’re starting it with the government of Gabon.

They have this great idea of putting together a rapid-response team because none of the countries have the resources to fight poaching.

Our motivation is to disrupt some of the rebel groups and militias that have disrupted communities where we work.

It’s something most foundations wouldn’t do. I can’t tell you what we’ll be doing in three years, and I think that’s a good thing.