Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, clearly puts a premium on philanthropy.

He and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates set up the Giving Pledge about four years ago, in which billionaires promise to give their wealth away to charity.

They didn't need to sign up Chuck Feeney, co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers, who was once worth $7.5 billion. He has been donating heavily to charity, largely through his foundation Atlantic Philanthropies, for at least 30 years.

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And Feeney, 83, plans to disgorge all his wealth to charity by 2016. Buffett is impressed.

"Chuck has set an example," Buffett said while presenting Feeney with the Forbes 400 Lifetime Achievement Award for Philanthropy, Forbes reports. "It’s a real honor to talk about a fellow who is my hero and Bill Gates’ hero. He should be everybody’s hero."

Steve Forbes, chairman of Forbes Media, says that the wealthiest Americans are making a major difference in solving public problems such as health and education through philanthropy.

"More than ever, individuals are funding solutions, not stop-gaps. What sparked such a sharp shift? The free markets," he writes in The Washington Post.

"The past two decades have spawned a new wave of billionaires who have taken up the banner of social justice, sparking a golden age of philanthropy not seen since the days of Rockefeller, Carnegie and Morgan."

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