After making her name in music, Dolly Parton lived her life in charity. From the community where she grew up to frontier medical research, her impact was felt on scales large and small. Here are just a few of the projects to which she devoted her money and time:
The Imagination Library
Founded in 1995 and inspired by her father’s illiteracy, Parton’s Imagination Library has given away over 332 million books, according to the website’s updating counter. The Library says that “1 in 6 children under the age of five in the USA receives Imagination Library books.”
Children’s Health and COVID-19
Parton had a long relationship with the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, beginning with a $1 million pledge in 2017 in honor of the hospital’s treatment of her niece’s leukemia. In April of 2020 Parton donated $1 million to VUMC as part of the center’s work with Moderna on its coronavirus vaccine. She helped pay for the first phase of research that has now been delivered across hundreds of millions of doses. Parton followed it up in 2022 with another $1 million donation to VUMC, this time for pediatric infectious disease research.
Education and The Dollywood Foundation
Parton founded the Dollywood Foundation in 1988, initially with the aim of increasing high school graduation rates in Sevier County, Tennessee. The Foundation paired up 7th and 8th graders in a Buddy Program and promised both $500 if both graduated. The program reduced dropout rates from over 30% to about 6%, and in 2000, they introduced the Dolly Parton Scholarship, which awards $15,000 to five Sevier County high school seniors every year. Alongside the Imagination Library, Parton’s efforts on behalf of Sevier County youth earned her the National Education Association’s highest honor in 2022.
Disaster Relief
When Sevier County was ravaged by wildfires in 2016, Parton pledged $1,000 per month for six months for every family affected — later raised to $5,000 per month — and backed that with a telethon that raised over $9 million. In 2021, her foundation gave another $700,000 to flood victims in Middle Tennessee, and after Hurricane Helene in 2024, Dollywood gave $1 million and she matched it with another million out of her personal accounts. She also donated $1 million to the Salvation Army in 2023.
Instead of flowers, Parton’s family is asking for donations to the Imagination Library.
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