Vince and Linda McMahon Family Foundation

The Vince and Linda McMahon Family Foundation donated more than $20 million to about 80 different organizations from its 2006 founding through 2024, according to Education Week. This includes children’s museums, literacy organizations, hospitals, emergency shelters, diabetes research and autism awareness. ² The foundation has given to universities, a northeast charter school organization, the Boys and Girls Club, Connecticut social service agencies, and health care organizations. ²

Background

The Vince and Linda McMahon Family Foundation is a private grantmaking organization founded by Vince McMahon and his wife Linda McMahon, with the former founding World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and the later previously working as CEO of WWE before joining the first Trump administration as Administrator of the Small Business Administration. The organization has provided funding towards youth services, violence prevention, and education programs. ^{1 3} The McMahon foundation is located in Stamford, Connecticut, and was founded in 2006. ^{1 4}

Vince McMahon is the founder of World Wrestling Entertainment, or WWE, a Stamford, Connecticut-based publicly traded pro wrestling organization. His wife, Linda McMahon, previously worked as the CEO of the WWE. She also previously worked as a French teacher, was a member of Connecticut’s state Board of Education, and ran twice unsuccessfully for a U.S. Senate seat from Connecticut in 2010 and 2012. ² In 2017, President Donald Trump appointed her as administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration. In late 2024, President-elect Trump announced he would nominate Linda McMahon to be U.S. Secretary of Education in his second presidential administration. ²

The Vince and Linda McMahon Family Foundation donated more than $20 million to about 80 different organizations from its 2006 founding through 2024, according to Education Week. This includes children’s museums, literacy organizations, hospitals, emergency shelters, diabetes research and autism awareness. ²

Vince McMahon is president of the foundation’s board, while his wife Linda is the secretary/treasurer. Other members of the board include WWE lawyer Jerry McDevitt  ⁵ and their daughter Stephanie M. Levesque. ¹

Grantmaking

Education Donations

Since its founding, the Vince and Linda McMahon Family Foundation has contributed at least $12 million to Sacred Heart University, a Catholic university in Connecticut, according to Education Week. Linda McMahon has been a trustee at Sacred Heart University. ²

The foundation has donated $2 million to Linda McMahon’s alma mater East Carolina University; ² at least $1 million to the Fishburne Military School, run by the Fishburne-Hudgins Educational Foundation, in Waynesboro, Virginia; ⁵ and over $1 million to Achievement First, a charter school network that mostly serves African American and Hispanic students at 41 K-12 schools in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York. ^{2 6}

The foundation has also made donations to Cloonan Middle School, the Stamford Public Education Foundation, the Greenwich Alliance for Education, and the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now, and to scholarships at Notre Dame Catholic High School in Fairfield, Connecticut. ⁷

Youth Development Contributions

The Vince and Linda McMahon Family Foundation has donated $1.2 million to the Boys and Girls Club of Stamford. ² In 2013, the foundation contributed $1 million to the Westport Weston Family Y. ⁸

In 2011, the McMahon foundation made a $50,000 grant to the Yerwood Teen Center in Stamford to provide summer internships for 60 youth, ages 13 through 19. ⁹ The foundation also made donations to help fund a youth center for the Archdiocese of Hartford Catholic Schools. ²

Recovery and Shelters Donations

In 2014, the Vince and Linda McMahon Family Foundation donated $500,000 to fund the opening of “Gini’s House” or the “Linda & Vince McMahon Center for Women and Children,” a substance abuse recovery center in Norwalk, Connecticut. ^{10 11}

The McMahon Family Foundation, Purdue Pharma, and St. Barnabas Episcopal Church have provided funding for St. Luke’s Lifeworks youth center in Stamford, Connecticut. ¹²