Alice L Walton Foundation
ActivePhilanthropy & VoluntarismFunds Individuals
About Alice L Walton Foundation
The Alice L Walton Foundation makes a small number of very large, strategic grants focused on educational access and institutions, cultural infrastructure, and place-based investments in Northwest Arkansas. Grants concentrate on building capacity — facilities for charter schools, higher‑education scholarships and medical school support, museum construction, and local community infrastructure (camp and church facilities). The foundation combines high-dollar national gifts to premier institutions with repeated, sizeable commitments to regional projects and nonprofit partners.
Focus Areas
Charter school facilities and financing (support for facilities that expand high‑quality public charter schools)Scholarships and medical education (university scholarships, support for a local medical school)Museum and cultural infrastructure (major capital support for national museum projects, e.g., women's history museum)Youth leadership and outdoor programs in Arkansas (multi‑year, large funding for Camp War Eagle)Northwest Arkansas community infrastructure (church sanctuary construction, land‑banking and local property acquisition for public use)
Who They Fund
About Alice L Walton Foundation
A defining feature of the Alice L Walton Foundation is its willingness to write very large checks for institutions that change the physical and academic capacity of a place. Recent grants include $50 million to Equitable Facilities Fund Inc. for public charter school financing, $30 million to The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University for scholarships, health partnerships, and Stanford Medicine programs, and major support for the Alice L Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville. The foundation’s grantmaking also reaches cultural and civic infrastructure, from museum construction and architecture support to local capital projects in Northwest Arkansas. That mix of education, health, arts, and community development appears repeatedly in the recent grant list. The foundation has backed school facilities, scholarship endowments, medical education, hospice care, and capital campaigns for organizations serving Northwest Arkansas. It also makes repeat commitments to a few grantees over multiple years, including Camp War Eagle Inc and the Alice L Walton School of Medicine, suggesting a pattern of sustained support rather than one-time gifts. Its portfolio blends national institutions such as Yale, Stanford, the Smithsonian, and Morehouse School of Medicine with place-based projects in Arkansas.
What Alice L Walton Foundation Funds
In education financing, the foundation made a $50 million grant to Equitable Facilities Fund Inc. to support financing for excellent public charter schools. It also gave $5 million to Yale University to support the Edward P. Bass School of Architecture, showing support for higher-education program development alongside school access. Health-related giving includes $30 million to Stanford for scholarships, RAISE-Health, Stanford Health Policy Research Partnerships, and Stanford Medicine and the Muse, plus $3 million to Circle of Life in Springdale for hospice programming and a building campaign. The foundation also gave $1.41 million to NWTI Education Foundation to expand allied health training facilities and integrate whole health. In arts and culture, it granted $5 million to the Smithsonian Institution for the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum Construction and $2.2 million to Spelman College for the Atlanta University Center Collective for the Study of Art History & Curatorial Studies.
How Alice L Walton Foundation Gives
Financial Snapshot
Annual Giving
$47.1M
Total Assets
$4.7B
Total Revenue
$721.9M
Total Expenses
$79.4M
Typical Grant Size
Most grants fall between $25K and $382K, with a median of $75K.
25th Percentile
$25K
Median
$75K
75th Percentile
$382K
Geographic Reach
National18 states funded
Funding intensity
LowHigh
Headquarters
Leadership
ALICE WALTON
DIRECTOR, PRESIDENT
Accepts unsolicited proposals
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