Billionaire's sister helps those down on their luck

You might say Doris Buffett has a soft spot for a hard-luck tale. But she's definitely not a sucker.

She's a tough philanthropist who says she works on the retail side of the giving business, where she knows who her customers are and can make sure her money is invested in the right places.

If you've squandered your life's resources and want someone to bail you out, don't come calling. But if life has knocked you down through no fault of your own, you're just the kind of person her Sunshine Lady Foundation has in mind.

Buffett's goal is to give away all of her assets before she dies, one person or one good cause at a time. She has already given away about $120 million, which she says takes her more than halfway there.

She gives a special focus to places she knows: Fredericksburg; Wilmington and Beaufort, N.C.; and Rockport, Maine.

"I prefer to work where I live," she said in the living room of her historic home on Caroline Street in Fredericksburg. Soft-spoken, quick to laugh, with bright blue eyes framed by fluffy white hair, she showed the determination that makes her set high standards for those she helps.

"I know who the good people are and who the players are. It's more difficult to be taken advantage of when you live here."

Causes that touch her heart include help for battered women, programs for children at risk, and education. Big projects have included construction of a Boys and Girls Club, housing for people with intellectual disabilities, college scholarships for abused women, and a college degree program for prisoners.

"I was born wanting to do this," Buffett said. "Possibly growing up in the Depression made some kind of impact on me."

During her high school years, after her father had been elected to Congress, she remembers seeing the hopeless look of a man carrying a suitcase made of cardboard and twine. "I burst into tears," she said. "I know it touched something in me."

Buffett, the 82-year-old older sister of billionaire Warren Buffett, has been through some hard knocks herself.

As the oldest of three children growing up in Omaha, Neb., she endured endless harangues from a mother who told her she was dumb and unlovely. Her four marriages ended in divorce.

She has had a strained relationship with her three children from her first marriage, in part because of the tumult of the subsequent marriages. She has become very close to grandson Alex Rozek, whose mother, Robin, now lives in Fredericksburg. Robin suffers from clinical depression, which is one of the mental illnesses that has plagued the family for generations, and is getting financial help from Buffett on the condition that she continue her treatment. Buffett's own health issues have included colon cancer and three warning strokes.

Risky investments took her from a worth of $12 million to a debt of $2 million after the stock market crash of 1987, but her richer-than-rich brother did not immediately bail her out. He helped her later to figure out how she could borrow on her expected inheritance. The entire family had become rich through money they'd invested in Warren Buffett's phenomenally successful Berkshire Hathaway company.

"I switched gears," she said. "I went back to comparing prices on frozen peas. If it was 2 cents less, that's what I bought. My aim was to pay it back as fast as I could. I sold jewelry, antiques, apartments. It was a test, for sure." She was living on Amelia Street in Fredericksburg at that time and rented out rooms in her house to raise money.

"I found to my amazement that I had maybe $10,000 in an account I hadn't figured on. I thought, 'This is the real test. Anybody can give money away when they have more than they need.' I think I was a little crazy, but I gave it away. I was thinking, 'This will tell me if I'm sincere about this or not.' It all worked out OK."

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Now Buffett is the subject of a biography by Michael Zitz called "Giving It All Away." She has appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America," public television with Charlie Rose, CNN's "American Morning" and "Nightline," among other appearances to talk about her life and the book.

When Warren Buffett decided in 2007 to give the bulk of his fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, he asked his sister to take over the letters from individuals asking for help, and she agreed. Later, he also offered money to answer the requests that came to him. Doris Buffett's contributions to the Sunshine Lady Foundation came primarily through her inheritance. In the past three years, she has given the foundation about $8 million to $11 million a year, according to the foundation's tax returns.

Warren Buffett said his approach to philanthropy is different from his sister's. He's directed his donations to five foundations, with the bulk going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

"I'm wholesale. She's retail," he said by phone. "We probably were always inclined that way. They both fit very much our talents and personalities, doing it the way we do it."

When he gets letters asking for individual aid, he sends them to his sister for vetting.

"She separates out the ones that fate has delivered a cruel blow in one way or another and helps them out in ways that change their life. I'm very proud of her," he said.

The Sunshine Lady Foundation has volunteers who do a lot of the heavy lifting. Two women, both former educators, read about 100 letters a day to determine which deserve further consideration. After documentation has been received, a group of eight Doers goes to work.

"It's a little like being a social worker," Buffett said, "but it's a social worker with money. You can get it done in a hurry."

The Doers make sure all other possibilities have been explored, she said, because "we want to be the last resort."

"We can't help all the way. If we say, 'OK, we can bring you up to date on your mortgage payments, but what are you going to do next month?' you have to have a plan. That's the collateral we ask for, a plan."

Noni Campbell, now one of the Doers, met Doris Buffett in 2005 when Campbell had cancer.

"I was one of the unfortunate people," Campbell said. "I had moved back to Maine with two daughters. My husband had walked out on us, right when I got breast cancer, of course.

"I was working and very sick with chemo and radiation, but still working because there was no support. Doris found out about it.

"At the lowest point in my life, financially, and with two kids, this lady I'd never met before sent me a check for $1,000.

"The reason it developed into a relationship [with Buffett], I found her to be the most intelligent, curious, giving, generous, practical, amazing spark of life. She's the most passionate person I've ever met. I think the word is inspiring.

"Doris is the kind of person, when you spend a little time with her, you feel like somebody has recharged your batteries. She gives off this energy that is just infectious."

Doers can get creative in the ways they make a difference.

Buffett recalls a woman who wrote asking for help to repair her house and furnace. She was unable to work because of health problems, and her husband had quit his job a few months earlier.

"If there are able-bodied people in the house, we look at that as a resource," Buffett said. "Everybody has to contribute when you're in bad shape." The foundation offered to match the husband's pay for about three months if he got a job.

"We had a check within a week. He was raking pine needles. Then he got a job at one of the big hardware stores," she said. "That solved the problem."

Situations like that illustrate Buffett's interpretation of retail philanthropy vs. wholesale philanthropy.

"We know where the money goes. We know what it buys. We know whether they're bad people or not. We know the effect it has on their lives and their children's lives," she said. "Even a bad tire can ruin a life if you can't get to work.

"It's such a wonderful position to be able to rush right in, pay the bills, keep the house from being taken over, put food in the pantry."

Buffett says her payoff comes through spreading joy to others.

"Our reward is the joy from seeing people have some good luck once in a while.. .. I'm having a marvelous time with the later years in my life."

kcalos@timesdispatch.com

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