Everyone deserves an opportunity to succeed.
No matter where you live. What you look like. Or how modest your beginnings.
These are the values handed down to me by my parents and grandparents. For 33 years, they have guided our family’s work to expand access to opportunity that can transform peoples’ lives, build strong communities and protect a natural world that sustains us all.
Never has this work had a greater sense of urgency. Amid the uncertainty every community is experiencing today, it remains important to acknowledge the work of so many in 2019 and understand how it will impact our work moving forward.
We believe the best way to help people fulfill their aspirations and reach their full potential is to get behind community-led efforts to drive meaningful change. We believe those closest to the problem are most capable of identifying and pursuing practical solutions that help and improve their neighbors’ lives. In 2019, the Walton Family Foundation committed more than $525.8 million to support these efforts—putting our resources behind organizations working to improve K-12 education, protect rivers, oceans and the communities they support, and better the quality of life in our family’s home region of Northwest Arkansas and the Arkansas-Mississippi Delta.
Transitioning into 2020, we recognized the urgent need for additional resources amid the COVID-19 pandemic. We are proud of our grantees’ response to unprecedented challenges and have supported them with an additional $35 million as they address the impact of the pandemic on their work. In addition to our collective efforts at the Walton Family Foundation, members of our family are honored to support the work of so many more in communities across the country with more than $180 million in additional COVID-19 response through individual giving, in-kind donations and access to capital for health care, small business, food, housing, arts and culture, and other immediate needs.
Our nation will grow stronger through this crisis because of our shared resilience, ingenuity and determination.
The most difficult experiences have never defined our country. Instead, it is how people rally together to rise above that is remembered for generations.
Our nation will grow stronger through this crisis because of our shared resilience, ingenuity and determination. Nowhere is this truth more evident than among the local community activists and leaders finding fresh and effective ways to help make progress real and meaningful in their neighbors’ lives. Their essential work inspires us, and we pledge to do our part to help our country through these difficult times and once again rise together.
