In 1991, Dolly Parton made an startling offer to every seventh and eighth-grade student in Sevier County, Tennessee where she grew up: the world-famous singer would personally give them $500 each if they graduated high school. The children had to pick a buddy to hold each other accountable; if one didn’t graduate, the other wouldn’t get the cash. But the idea worked: the county’s high school dropout rate plummeted from 35% to 6%.
This was the sort of practical, radical act of charity that Parton, nicknamed “St Dolly”, dedicated her life to trying out. By showing that all it took was the promise of $500 to incentivise kids to stay at school, Sevier County had to address the drop out rate (and it did). It is telling that the tributes shared after Parton’s death at 80 have been equally about her philanthropy and her music.
There was so much of both. She told People in 2021: “I’m kind of addicted to the feeling of giving. Knowing that I’m doing something good for someone else.” Parton’s family has encouraged fans to honour her legacy by donating to the Imagination Library, her charity that sends children around the world a free book every month from birth until they turn five.
More than 300m books have been sent to children since 1995; last year alone, the Imagination Library sent a book to a child the equivalent of one every 0.78 seconds. Sometimes Parton’s causes seemed curiously varied – like the 30,000-square-foot bald eagle sanctuary she founded in 1991 – but there were often deeply personal reasons behind her giving. The Imagination Library was perhaps the most personal to Parton, the fourth of 12 children raised in poverty.
And aside from improving child literacy, receiving a gift in the mail could do wonders for a child’s self-esteem. They start taking pride in themselves, and they know that somebody out there is thinking of [them].” Parton never had children, but she felt a particular duty to them. She founded the Dollywood Foundation in 1988, which has managed her philanthropy since: it handled her deal with the seventh and eighth graders, distributed $12m to Sevier County families whose homes were destroyed in wildfires in 2016, and gives out thousands of dollars in scholarships every year to high school students in Sevier County.
After Hurricane Helene in 2024, the foundation pledged $2m to recovery efforts in east Tennessee. In 2017 she gave $1m to the Pediatric Cancer Program at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s hospital in Tennessee to honour her niece who survived leukemia, and then gave $1m more in 2022 for paediatric infectious disease research.
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