Children and Women Are Focus of Youngest Buffett’s Philanthropy

In letters pledging $1-billion apiece to the foundations run by his three children, Warren Buffett wrote: “Expect to

make some mistakes; nothing important will be accomplished if you make only ‘safe’ decisions.”

That comment was especially meaningful to the artist in the family — Peter Buffett. The youngest of the three children, Mr. Buffett is a successful NewAge musician, but like any creative artist, his career has been through ups and downs.

In the summer of 2005, his production Spirit — the Seventh Fire, which coupled his own Native American-inspired music with dancing and IMAX film imagery, was canceled midway through a tour of East Coast cities.

He expects to take the same kind of risks with his foundation, the NoVo Foundation (Novo means “change, alter, invent” in Latin), which will focus on early-childhood education and helping women and girls in developing countries.

“We’re out to try and level the playing field, and address what I consider basic human rights,” Mr. Buffett says. “We want to take some good swings at the fences. Coming from a creative background, it’s always nice to have the latitude to go out there and think big and to not be afraid of falling down every once in a while.”

In Roger Lowenstein’s biography, Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, Peter Buffett comes across as the child most affected by Warren Buffett’s obsession with investing. He found his father so emotionally withdrawn that at one he point he bought him a book called The Father’s Handbook.

But after dropping out of Stanford University to pursue his passion for music, Mr. Buffett has in some ways developed the same single-minded focus on music that his father possesses for business.

“I don’t really have a hobby,” Mr. Buffett says. “I’m one of those guys who sits in a room by himself and gets food slipped under the door, and sometime later slips a CD out.”

Keeping Expenses Low

Mr. Buffett and his wife, Jennifer, moved to New York City from Milwaukee a year ago, about the time he and his siblings learned that their father was planning to make a major gift to their foundations. Jennifer Buffett is president of the NoVo Foundation, and Mr. Buffett, who has two adult children whom he adopted during a previous marriage, is chairman.

They prepared for the large gift by hiring Bob Dandrew, formerly director of philanthropic services at the Rudolf Steiner Foundation, a nonprofit group that connects philanthropists with charities, and an administrative assistant.

“We’re going to try to keep the staff as lean as we can, but we don’t want to miss opportunities by being too lean,” Mr. Buffett says.

Like his sister, Susie, Mr. Buffett’s largest gifts to date have been to Educare, a network of child-care centers that started in Chicago. In 2005, he gave $3-million to cover roughly half the construction costs of an Educare Center in Milwaukee, where he lived for 15 years. He also has pledged $15-million over five years to the Buffett Early Childhood Fund, which he founded with his sister.

Peter and Jennifer Buffett credit Zainab Salbi, the Iraqi-born founder and chief executive officer of Women for Women International, for sparking their desire to help women in developing countries.

Women for Women, which received $25,000 from Mr. Buffett’s foundation in 2005, provides financial assistance, education, and business loans to women in war-torn countries like Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Iraq.

“Empowering women in developing countries seems to be one of the most efficient ways to raise all the boats in a country,” Mr. Buffett says.

The NoVo Foundation will probably support some pilot projects “to see what works and what doesn’t,” according to Mr. Buffett.

He says the foundation also will consider investing in microfinance institutions, which typically make small loans to female entrepreneurs in developing countries. “It’s something that’s becoming more and more popular,” he says, “and it looks like it works.”

The NoVo Foundation sometimes works anonymously. In 2004, for example, it made several grants totaling roughly $3-million to charities that work with American Indians through the Tides Center, which provides philanthropic guidance to donors.

Mr. Buffett doesn’t expect the foundation to begin making a greater number of grants, even with an eightfold increase in assets.

“We really want to get more focus,” he says. “From now until the end of the year, we’re really going to be figuring out what we mean when we use these big words like human rights. It is a time, in the music vernacular, to ‘woodshed.’”