An article about the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation in Sunday's editions of The Sun said that in life Harry Weinberg was "decried as a slumlord" whose wealth was built at the expense of the poor. In fact, Mr. Weinberg owned relative ly little residential real estate. His holdings were mostly in commercial real estate, much of it in downtown Baltimore and in deteriorated condition.
The sun regrets the errors.
The angels of mercy are again on the move today, traveling across town in a boxy old Lincoln Continental on their way to East Baltimore and the gleaming new headquarters of Meals-on-Wheels of Central Maryland.
When they arrive, the driver's door opens and a tall, ruddy-faced, sixtyish man sidles to the front of the building where he gazes up at the sign. The other two men, older and less spry, soon shuffle up alongside him, peering through the bottle-thick lenses of their eyeglasses, looking like elderly museumgoers appraising a work art. They nod to each other. The sign, they agree, has come out just fine.
The big, rust-colored letters read, "The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Central Service Facility."
Golf courses in Florida are crowded with men who fit the exact profile of this trio: well-off, retired businessmen. But these men are working as hard as ever. Two years ago, they abruptly joinedthe world's most important figures in philanthropy, sitting atop a foundation with $640 million in assets, enough to make it the 22nd-largest charitable trust in the country and by far the biggest in Baltimore.
Almost certainly none of the giant foundations could match this one for quirkiness. The Weinberg foundation has only one staff member. It does not solicit applications, publicize criteria for grants or even publish a telephone number. Instead, grants often originate in casual contacts or news reports or other unplanned ways that suddenly excite the trustees' interest and sometimes prompt them to jet across the country or even around the world.
Their task is an enviable one: to spend upward of $31 million a year on good works, and to make sure that variations of that same sign go up on dozens upon dozens of projects across the United States and Israel.
All of this charity will be accomplished on behalf of the late Harry Weinberg, an irascible real estate speculator who in life suffered a reputation for acquiring his staggering wealth at the expense of the poor, the very people he charged these men with assisting after his death.
The three men are Bernard Siegel, 62, whose accounting firm worked for Harry Weinberg for nearly 30 years before his death in 1990, and the late entrepreneur's younger brothers, 80-year old William and 74-year-old Nathan, both of whom also worked closely with him. The three are joined on the Weinberg foundation's board by two non-Baltimoreans, Alvin Awaya, who managed Harry Weinberg's real estate empire in Hawaii and Robert T. Kelly Sr. of Scranton, Pa., who also worked as an auditor for Mr. Weinberg.
Each man is forever on the look-out for good works, often stumbling upon them in unexpected ways.
For example, more than a year ago, Mr. Siegel was driving to work from his Randallstown home when he heard a radio report about a new Red Cross project to trace the victims of the Nazi Holocaust.
The trustees visited the project's headquarters in Baltimore. They determined the project would be more effective if it were automated. Without even being asked, they decided to contribute $37,000 for the purchase of computers.
Still, they were not satisfied. The project used volunteers -- some of whom were survivors of the Holocaust themselves -- who sat in a cramped, windowless office translating materials into German.
"Nathan Weinberg felt there should be space with light," said Steve Mandell, the project's director. "He felt it was it was inappropriate for Holocaust survivors not to work in natural light." Again, without waiting to be asked, the trustees anted up another $22,000 for a renovation that would put the volunteers in an office with plenty of windows.
"It was extraordinary, magical," said Mr. Mandell.
The capriciousness of the foundation has been frustrating for some.
"They do not operate in the normal way at all," said Albert Payne, who tried unsuccessfully to get money for his N. M. Carroll Manor, a Baltimore residence for senior citizens. Mr. Payne, the assistant director, said he repeatedly wrote to the foundation without any response.
"Other places let you know what they're interested in, they have experts review your proposal, and then they get back to you," Mr. Payne said. "These people we couldn't figure out."
Mr. Payne's remarks were more impolitic than he realized. According to the foundation's charter, written by Harry Weinberg, any charitable organization that "at any time challenges, directly or indirectly," the decisions of the trustees, "shall forever be barred from receiving any distributions" from the foundation.
Others, who have enjoyed the foundation's largess, have been genuinely touched precisely because of its singular ways, finding the trustees a refreshing departure from the typical professional bureaucracy of a large foundation.
Last fall, William Ewing, head of the Maryland Food Bank, learned that he could get 2 million pounds of food left over from Operation Desert Storm if he could immediately find $80,000 to finance freight costs from the West Coast.
He mentioned the problem to Gov. William Donald Schaefer who asked one of his aides to call the Weinberg Foundation on behalf of the food bank. Within 20 minutes, Mr. Ewing had his money. "That was almost unheard of," Mr. Ewing marveled.
"If I had had to play around with this thing for three months, a lot of the food would have been gone. But because we could react right away, we got much more of the food than a lot of others in the country."
Mr. Siegel, who acts as spokesman for the foundation, defends the trustees' less-than-comprehensive approach to finding good works. They don't solicit applications, he said, for fear of receiving a flood of applications, which would then require the hiring of a large staff, which would in turn divert money away from its original purposes. Perhaps the foundation finds its causes in haphazard ways, he said, but that doesn't make them any less worthy.
"If you're listening, there's no end to the need out there," said Mr. Siegel. "No matter what you do, you can't even scratch the
surface."
Some are disappointed the foundation doesn't see itself as a catalyst for social change. "If you spend all your money feeding the poor rather than looking for ways to eradicate hunger, then in 20 years, you'll still be feeding the hungry and nothing will have changed," said Susan Leviton, a law professor at the University of Maryland and president of a group called Advocates for Children and Youth. "The hope is that [the Weinberg foundation] will come to see their potential and how they can be a force for positive change."
Mr. Siegel said he doesn't have any quarrel with foundations that are more experimental. Harry Weinberg simply wasn't interested.
That Mr. Siegel and the other trustees are publicly talking at all about their giving philosophy is a drastic change. Their year-long silence following Mr. Winberg's death seemed a reflection of his own loathing of the press, but it contributed to some decidedly negative publicity.
When the foundation filed its first official report with the state following Mr. Weinberg's death, many were stunned by its paltry charitable contributions. In the two years before his death, Mr. Weinberg had given $54 million and $21 million to charity. But in the year after his death, the foundation reported gifts of less than $2 million.
The lack of activity seemed to confirm fears that the foundation's unprofessional approach was stanching the flow of money to needy causes.
The truth, unknown to all but the trustees, was different, Mr. Siegel said. For at least 30 years, Harry Weinberg, often decried as a slumlord, intended to bequeath nearly all his money to a foundation in the names of himself and his wife. He knew it would take the foundation's trustees time to come to grips with the complexity of his vast holdings. Accordingly, he limited the amount of gift-giving for an initial period.
Only in the last year, Mr. Siegel said, have those restrictions been lifted. Now, he said, the foundation will be spending about 5 percent of its assets a year -- or about $31 million each year.
The recent coming-out of the Baltimore trustees has revealed them to be affable men who seem tickled over what they have wrought. Last week, they toured the renovation of a grocery store which is now housing the once scattered Meals-on-Wheels program.
The foundation had contributed $500,000 to the $2.2 million project. As the trustees inspected the spanking new offices and the state-of-the-art kitchen, they issued one exclamation after another, hardly believing the changes that have occurred in a building that was only a shell three months ago.
"It's like a woman in the morning after she puts on her paint and powder," said Nathan Weinberg in his heavy Baltimore accent. "She looks like a different person."
After the tour, it was back into the Lincoln and the business of giving away millions, perhaps faster than any group of five men have ever done so.
"It's not as easy as it looks," said Nathan Weinberg. "Anyone will take money. A monkey will take money. But to give to people who really need it, that's the problem."
Weinberg Foundation
As of Feb. 28, 1991, the Weinberg Foundation listed assets of $639,935,746, making it the the 22nd-wealthiest foundation in the country, according to the Foundation Center.
Provisions
* 25 percent must be spent primarily for the benefit of Jewish people.
* 25 percent must be spent primarily for the benefit of non-Jewish people.
* The remaining 50 percent is unrestricted as to religion.
* One-half of all the money spent must be for building or repair projects.
* Most of the funds must be spent on behalf of the poor.
* No money can go directly to a college or university or to any organization whose primary purpose relates to music, literature or art.
Gifts
For the year ending Feb. 28, 1991, the Weinberg Foundation made contributions of $1,900,012. Although not yet totaled, the foundation's grants for the following year will far exceed that total.
Among the more recent grants: $500,000 to Meals-on-Wheels of Central Maryland; $59,500 to the American Red Cross of Maryland; $1,524,000 to the Levindale Hebrew Geriatric Center and Hospital; $500,000 to Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital; $50,000 to Israel Guide Dog Center for the Blind, and $1,025,000 to the Association for Retarded Citizens of Hawaii.