Dolly Parton is an American country music singer and philanthropist with an estimated net worth of over $650 million as of 2025. ¹ She won the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy in 2022 and was named a “titan” in TIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People In Philanthropy” for 2025.  ²

Parton’s philanthropic efforts began in 1988 when she founded the Dollywood Foundation and grew larger in 1995 when she created the Dollywood Foundation’s signature program, the Imagination Library. Since then, she has invested in scholarships, animal shelter efforts, books for children, cancer and medical research centers, and disaster relief efforts. ³

Dollywood Foundation

The Dollywood Foundation is Dolly Parton’s main philanthropic organization. In 2024, the foundation reported $89,841,114 in total revenue ⁴ and $84,089,692 in expenses ⁵ with $82,831,773 of that going to the Imagination Library Program. ⁶ As of 2025, Dolly was serving as chair ⁷ of the foundation, and until 2025 Jeff Conyers was the president. ⁸

Imagination Library

Parton founded the Imagination Library program in 1995 as an initiative to provide one free age-appropriate book to every child in Sevier County, Tennessee who registered for the program before they attended school. ⁹ In 2001, the program was expanded to include 27 affiliate organizations operating in 11 states mailing books to almost 30,000 children. In 2004, the governor of Tennessee pledged to provide the program to every child in the state. Parton expanded the program into Canada in 2006, the U.K. in 2007, and Australia in 2013. In 2016, the program hit the one million books per month milestone, and it achieved the two million books per month milestone in 2022. In 2024, one in seven children in the United States were receiving books through the program. ¹⁰

Other Efforts

Education

In 1989, Parton created a program that provided a $500 scholarship to every student in her native Sevier County, Tennessee who planned to attend the local Hiwassee College. In 2000, in conjunction with the Dollywood Foundation, she created the Dolly Parton Scholarship which offered a $15,000 college scholarship to five high-school seniors in Sevier County. In 2016, through the Imagination Library, Parton awarded a $30,000 scholarship to a two-year-old to celebrate the Imagination Library shipping one million books per month. In 2022, Parton announced that she would cover the cost of tuition, fees, and books for any employee at the Dollywood theme park who wished to attend college. ³

Environment

In 1991, Dolly Parton paid for the Eagle Mountain Sanctuary, a 30,000-square-foot sanctuary in Dollywood run by the American Eagle Foundation to provide shelter to the largest collection of non-releasable bald eagles. In 2016, Dolly created the My People Fund, a program that donated nearly $9 million for disaster relief efforts following Great Smoky Mountain wildfires. Parton also held the “Smoky Mountains Rise: A Benefit for the My People Fund” telethon that raised $13 million for wildfire relief efforts. In 2021, Parton worked with her businesses in the Great Smoky Mountains to raise $700,000 for relief efforts following the catastrophic floods in Middle Tennessee. ³

Health Care

In 2007, Dolly Parton put on a benefit concert that raised $1 million in funding for the LeConte Medical Center, which was completed in 2010. In 2017, Parton released a children’s album which helped raise $1 million for the children’s hospital at Vanderbilt University, where her niece was treated for leukemia. In 2020, Parton donated $1 million to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center to help find a cure for COVID-19. In 2022, Dolly donated another $1 million to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center to help fund research on pediatric infectious diseases. ³

1. Nelson, Allie. “No Need to Work ‘9 to 5’—Dolly Parton’s Net Worth in 2025 Is Fit for a Country Queen.” Parade, December 3, 2025. https://parade.com/celebrities/dolly-parton-net-worth. 
2. Semuels, Alana. “Time100 Philanthropy: Dolly Parton.” Time, May 20, 2025. https://time.com/collections/time100-philanthropy-2025/7286075/dolly-parton/. 
3. Aniftos, Rania. “A Timeline of Dolly Parton’s Good Deeds.” Billboard, March 7, 2023. https://www.billboard.com/lists/dolly-parton-good-deeds-timeline/2016-my-people-fund/. 
4. Dollywood Foundation, Form 990, 2024, Part I Line 12b. 
5. Dollywood Foundation, Form 990, 2024, Part I Line 19b. 
6. Dollywood Foundation, Form 990, 2024, Part III Line 4a. 
7. Dollywood Foundation, Form 990, 2024, Part VII. 
8. “Meet Our Team.” Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Accessed December 16, 2025. https://imaginationlibrary.com/meet-our-team/. 
9. “The Dollywood Foundation.” Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Accessed December 16, 2025. https://imaginationlibrary.com/the-dollywood-foundation/. 
10. “Awards & Milestones.” Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Accessed December 16, 2025. https://imaginationlibrary.com/about-us/awards-and-milestones/.