Boycott Dooms Novel Giving Program

The Berkshire Hathaway investment company — headed by the Omaha billionaire Warren E. Buffett —

has announced that it is ending its novel corporate-giving program, which let shareholders decide which charities should benefit.

The decision came after the company’s new subsidiary, The Pampered Chef kitchen-supply company, was the target of a consumer boycott by an anti-abortion group and others because some of Berkshire Hathaway’s gifts had gone to groups that support population control.

Since the program started in 1981, it had distributed $197-million to nonprofit groups. Mr. Buffett gave shareholders the power to pick recipients of the corporation’s donations because he said he didn’t approve of the approach followed by most companies, in which top managers and other employees make giving decisions.

“Just as I wouldn’t want you to implement your personal judgments by writing checks on my bank account for charities of your choice, I feel it inappropriate to write checks on your corporate ‘bank account’ for charities of my choice,” he wrote stockholders in 1981 when he began the program. “Your charitable preferences are as good as mine.”

A member of Congress who admired the Buffett approach five years ago attempted to pass legislation requiring all public companies to give shareholders a major say in deciding which charities should benefit from a corporation’s largesse. Rep. Paul E. Gillmor, an Ohio Republican, later dropped the idea, saying he was sympathetic to complaints that it could have created administrative nightmares for some companies.

In the past, Mr. Buffett, who reportedly owns about 30 percent of Berkshire Hathaway stock, has given corporation designations to his own Buffett Foundation, which frequently supports organizations that promote population control, such as Planned Parenthood.

Although Berkshire Hathaway did not mention a boycott — referring only to “harmful criticism” directed at The Pampered Chef — the anti-abortion organization Life Decisions International has, on its Web site, urged a boycott of Berkshire Hathaway companies because the shareholder gift program allowed Planned Parenthood and similar organizations to receive money.

Following the Berkshire Hathaway announcement, the Web site of Life Decisions International said that it was dropping Berkshire Hathaway and its subsidiaries as a “boycott target.”