Doris Buffett is a life-long philanthropist and advocate for the power of education to transform people’s circumstances. For the past 15+ years, Doris has been giving funds to low-income communities in the most direct way possible: by bypassing bureaucracy and paying the types of bills preventing people from changing their personal circumstances once and for all through her Letters Foundation program. Simultaneously, she has built a national platform to engage young adults in learning how to give effectively through Learning by Giving.

In 2020, Doris will help seed a new collaborative fund, Give to Learn, which will provide funds directly to low-income and first-generation college students experiencing a financial obstacle that is threatening their ability to complete their degree. Doris is seeking to launch this collaborative fund with a few select like-minded, Boston-based philanthropists to address the inequity in financial support that have plagued low-income and first-generation college students from Boston for far too long.

Give to Learn is aimed at attacking educational inequity by providing resources directly to those first-generation college students in need, while simultaneously empowering other recent college graduates as the advisory panel and decision makers in the process.  In 2020, Learning by Giving will be working with Boston nonprofits to select a group of recent first-generation college students from Boston to inform the design, and ultimately the execution of, this fund. Under their leadership, Give to Learn will disperse grants directly for books, laptops, car repairs, childcare, rent, professional clothing for interviewing, paid internships, modest tuition gaps, and more. 

Give to Learn will provide young people trying to obtain higher education with a place to find support, and a group of thoughtfully trained peers with the opportunity to become philanthropists. Join them.