2004: Will Berkshire bring back the shareholder-designated philanthropy program?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning. I’m Jim Hayes (PH) from Alexandria, Virginia.

I hate to beat a dead horse, but I really like the charitable plan. Suppose you brought it back and then personally opted out and then we floated you a bonus equal to what you might otherwise be entitled. Would you consider that?

WARREN BUFFETT: Are you talking about renewing the shareholder-designated contribution program?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes. And then personally opting out, and then we could have a shareholders’ vote to grant you an option bonus or some kind of tax-advantaged bonus.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, I think that might get a little complicated.

Additionally, I wasn’t the only one giving money at all, nor was Charlie, to organizations, primarily pro-choice organizations, in fact over — I don’t know of any other than pro-choice organizations — that the people that were causing harm to the Pampered Chef representatives. We had dozens and dozens, maybe even hundreds, giving money on both sides of the issue.

I mean, if you looked at one class — well, the largest classification of gifts went to churches. Probably the largest classification in that, I’m (inaudible) positive, were Catholic churches.

And we had people giving money to everything in the world, which is exactly the way we wanted it. I mean, whatever — it’s the shareholders’ money.

So even if you had the two of us opt out, we would have organizations that would get violent about the fact that some money was going to pro-choice organizations. And rather than take it out on us, whom they can’t hurt, they’ve taken it out on some very innocent people.

And neither Charlie nor I like the idea of somebody — you know, some woman that’s developed a living, you know, in Dubuque, Iowa or in Casper, Wyoming, having her livelihood destroyed because of what we’re doing.

So reluctantly, we gave up the practice. I mean, we — actually, I received a letter one time from somebody — some organization was monitoring — said they didn’t give — they didn’t care if we were giving $10 million to pro-life organizations and $1 to pro-choice organizations, they were still going to boycott our people.

Well, boycotts don’t bother me. We had some of that right along, always on a small scale. But — because they can’t — they basically can’t hurt us in any significant way.

But they can hurt individuals very badly and we’re not going to have something around Berkshire that’s hurting a bunch of people that have devoted their lives to working with us. So we reluctantly gave it up.

Charlie?

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, as I said, it’s a dead horse and I miss it, too.