America’s Richest Woman: Alice Walton’s $1.5 Billion Lifetime Charitable Giving and Growing Philanthropy

Alice Walton, Walmart heiress and one of the world’s richest women has donated an estimated $1.5 billion to various charitable causes over her lifetime. Recently, she made her largest known charitable contribution, according to a newly released tax return. Her Texas-based Art Bridges Foundation distributed $390 million during the fiscal year ending September 30, 2023. This included $249 million allocated to the new Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville, Arkansas, her family’s hometown. Forbes estimates that Walton’s lifetime donations have now positioned her as one of the 30 largest philanthropists in the U.S.

Walton currently ranks as the 26th-most generous philanthropist in America, just behind cable TV pioneer Amos Hostetter Jr., who has given an estimated $1.7 billion to causes like climate change, the arts, and education. However, she remains well behind Warren Buffett, the country’s top donor.

The Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, which is working to gain accreditation, aims to offer a four-year MD program that integrates traditional medical education with arts, humanities, and whole health principles. The school is scheduled to open in 2025 and welcome its first class of 48 students to a 154,000-square-foot facility connected by woodland trails to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art—Walton’s most high-profile philanthropic project to date. In 2023, her Art Bridges Foundation contributed $30 million to the museum.

Walton, whose net worth is estimated at $91.3 billion, chaired the board of Crystal Bridges for a decade before passing leadership to her nephew’s wife, Olivia Walton, in 2021. She is credited with founding the museum, which sits on 120 acres and houses works by artists like Andy Warhol and Georgia O’Keeffe. While much of the $1.6 billion required to open Crystal Bridges in 2011 came from trusts in the names of her late brother, John Walton, and mother, Helen Walton, Alice Walton has significantly increased her personal philanthropic contributions in recent years.

Over the past decade, Walton has directed more than $5.7 billion into five family charitable foundations, which have distributed nearly a quarter of that amount to date. This includes approximately $380 million from the Walton Family Foundation, which her parents founded in 1987, aimed at education reform, environmental initiatives, and support for the Bentonville region. Additionally, her Art Bridges Foundation has spent over $490 million acquiring and loaning American art to more than 230 museums nationwide, including the Art Institute of Chicago, MoMA in New York, and the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., since its establishment in 2016.

There is also a possibility that Walton’s lifetime giving may be even higher, as she has gifted $2.3 billion in Walmart stock over the past decade. Some may have gone to the Walton family foundations after 2022 or directly to nonprofits, while some likely ended up in donor-advised funds (DAFs), which do not disclose contributors or require immediate disbursement of assets.

In a 2021 press release announcing her retirement as chair of Crystal Bridges, she noted her plans to focus more on her leadership roles in newly founded organizations centered on the arts, health, and well-being.

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