Kiwis asked to dig deeper for charity

Helena Francis. Photo / Martin Hunter

The daughter of a wealthy property developer is urging well-heeled New Zealanders to take a leaf out of Warren Buffett's book and give more to charity.

When he died in 1999 Wayne Francis left a generous proportion of the ongoing profits from his businesses to charity. Francis, who was from Canterbury, developed subdivisions such as Dannemora in East Auckland and was a successful horse breeder.

His daughter Helena now chairs the Wayne Francis Charitable Trust and is a director of one of his companies. She is also on the board of Philanthropy New Zealand which is asking Kiwis to think about how much they can give in the wake of the Giving Pledge.

The Giving Pledge is the campaign being run by US billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates to get similarly wealthy Americans to donate at least half of their fortunes to charity. Buffett has promised to give 99 per cent of his US$47 billion fortune to the Bill Gates Foundation. Helena Francis says there's an "undeniable message" there.

"We're probably a little short on billionaires [but] if people like Buffett and Gates can appreciate the importance of giving ... surely we should be looking at ourselves to be doing something on an appropriate scale."

Her father instilled in her that there was only so much a person needed to live a nice life, she said.

The mother-of-two said one of the reasons he set up the trust was so that she and her family could be involved.

"There's no benefit to children being spoiled within an inch of their lives, and there are multitudes of benefits for them to see generosity from their family."

Francis wouldn't say how much her family trust gave away each year, except that grants ranged from $3000 to $200,000.

"We probably feel comfortable talking about the work we do but not about the money involved in it."

Inland Revenue received claims for tax credits on $187 million worth of donations in the 2008-2009 year.