Giving to charity, quietly or otherwise, is good

What's wrong with our billionaires? Nothing, really.

Not one Minnesota family estimated to be worth $1 billion or more showed up on the list of 40 super-wealthy folks who took the challenge of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett this week to donate at least half their wealth to charity.

But that's understandable. Most of the wealth of Minnesota families who make the annual Forbes list of the nation's wealthiest comes from the estimated value of private companies that usually are passed on among the generations through family trusts and otherwise.

That would include names like Pohlad, Carlson, Taylor, Hubbard, MacMillan and Cargill, some of whom also are significant local and national philanthropists.

Moreover, not every billionaire who intends to give away a significant portion of his wealth wants to be on a public list, noted Kevin Bergman, executive vice president of the family office of Dick Schulze, the founder and retired CEO of Best Buy.

"I have consistently stated that with wealth comes responsibility," Schulze said in a prepared statement. "I am fortunate to be in a position to make a difference in society. It has always been a priority for me and my family to address this need. Although I am no longer a resident of Minnesota, our foundation continues to support charity throughout this country to provide a better future for those in need."

Schulze, who controls more than $2 billion in Best Buy stock, has given hundreds of millions to build family foundations, and directly to numerous youth and medical charities, the Universities of St. Thomas and Minnesota, and the Mayo Clinic, among others.

Buffett, the nation's most prominent investor through his publicly held Berkshire Hathaway, already has ka- chinged his adult kids and their foundations with millions. He plans to give 99 percent of his wealth to charity through the Gates Foundation.

"We're off to a terrific start," Buffett told reporters this week. His goal is to free up about $600 billion over time from affluent Americans. This is called giving money a good name.

"The publicity is good," said Jennifer McDonald, an attorney and the volunteer head of the One Percent Club, a group of several hundred Minnesotans who advocate giving at least 5 percent of income, or 1 percent of net worth, annually. "People of wealth generally are not giving at capacity. And they can do more without giving up any standard of living. And it's not just the super-wealthy."

Giving by income

American individuals, corporations and foundations donated $304 billion in 2009, down from $315 billion in 2008, according to the Giving USA Foundation and the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

In 2008, an American Enterprise Institute study estimated that households of more than $250,000 donate on average about 3 percent.

Bob and Polly McRea, One Percent Club members and retired small business owners, are part of a growing trend of affluent folks who give away a third or more of their income annually.

They point to the late Kenneth Dayton, a friend and member of the retailing family that founded what is now Target Corp., as an inspiration. In the last years of his generous life, Dayton, also a One Percent Club member, spoke about his evolution as a philanthropist, starting with "minimal response" as a young businessman after World War II and eventually to "involvement and interest" and eventually to "as much as possible."

As he became engaged in charitable work, and saw the positive impact he could have, Dayton and his wife, Judy, who's still out there writing checks, started to give beyond the maximum amounts that they could deduct from their income taxes. The last stage was when they decided they had left enough to their kids.

"Accordingly, we are able to leave almost all of our assets to the nonprofit organizations we have selected," he wrote more than a decade ago.