The Charity Empire Dolly Parton Built

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2:04Already folks, I want to spend some time talking about Dali Parton today and there's a reason why I didn't just become a country music fan overnight or something and I gotta be honest, I didn't listen to a lot of Dali Parton but Dali Parton does represent something we don't talk about enough in American life. The extraordinary power and moral virtue of philanthropy. We spend a lot of time in politics talking about what the government should or should not do for people. Pretty much everybody in American politics now suggests that if there's a problem, it is the job of the government to solve it but there is another model for lifting up fellow Americans. It is much older than the welfare state. It is more personal than the welfare state. It is more effective than the welfare state. It builds community. It's deeply rooted in the religious tradition that built the United States in the first place. We're talking of course about charity. Charity is a virtue because it is voluntary. It requires you to look at the people around you. Your family, your neighbors, your church, your town and ask what can I do? And also it means that if you're taking charity, you know that you owe something to your neighbors. Ultimately, strong American communities can't be built by bureaucracies far away. Community is built by your church, by your synagogue, by families, small businesses, civic organizations. Dali Parton spent decades

3:08doing exactly that. She didn't ask how people voted. She was famously apolitical. Her philanthropy was apolitical as well. So we're going to run through the top five ways Dali Parton gave back and obviously they should be inspiring. Listen, we're not all Dali Parton. Most Americans don't have a hundred million bucks sitting around waiting to give away but philanthropy is not reserved for billionaires and world famous country singers. Everyone can donate to the church down the street. You can donate to the local food bank. You can sponsor a little league team. There are lots of ways you can help people out with time, with money. You can hire somebody who needs a first job and start business. All of these are great ways and it's all right in front of you. Now again, Dali Parton became so good at giving away her own money that other ultra wealthy people asked her for help in distributing there. So in 2022, Amazon found her Jeff Bezos and future wife Lauren Sanchez gave Parton a hundred million bucks to distribute to causes of her choosing. Number one, education. So we begin with imagination library. In 1995, Dali Parton started the imagination library that's a program that sent one book per month to kids in Sevier County from birth until their first year of school. Here was Dali Parton talking about it. When the Bible,

4:11where it talks about honor your father and your mother, I don't think that necessarily means just to obey them. I think it means to bring honor to their name if you can. So I got my daddy involved with this little program. I wanted him to feel like he was part of something special. So we started the imagination library where we were given books to the children in our home county in Sevier County where we were born and raised. And so we'd hope that it would do good there. And it became such a popular program that the governor of Tennessee at that time, Phil Bredison. He thought the idea was so great. They took it and went all over Tennessee. And then later, it went on into Canada. And now we're all over the world and different parts of the world. This summer, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey gave Parton's imagination library two million bucks to fund the distribution of children's books. And Dali Parton would actually send letters to five-year-olds who were starting school. Dali Parton also threw her Dali Wood Foundation

5:13awarded five fifteen thousand dollar year college scholarships every year to graduating high school seniors in her home county of Sevier County, Tennessee, 75 grand. The scholarships were for students who had a dream they wanted to pursue and wanted to actually actualize all of that. And the foundation gives a bunch of other scholarships, including in 2016, a thirty thousand dollar scholarship to a young girl in Arkansas to recognize the imagination library's achievement of distributing books to a million children every month. Now the foundation was initially focused on reducing school drop-out rates in Sevier County by offering five hundred dollar gifts to graduates. And that actually worked. High school drop-out rates went to six percent from thirty-five percent in the county. The Dali Wood Foundation also offered local high school graduates fifteen thousand dollar scholarship. Number two, Kera for Dali Wood employees. Dali Parton also would help provide a college education to Dali Wood employees. She provided Dali Wood employees with free child care free meals, a dedicated Dali Wood employee health care center. So if you were an employee at Dali Wood pursuing a college degree, your tuition, associated fees and books would be one hundred percent covered by the Dali Wood theme park. The offer also included all eleven thousand full-time part-time

6:16and seasonal employees that worked at any of the twenty-five amusement parks and attractions under a harsher and enterprises as Dali Wood's parent company, including Dali Wood. Under the Grow You program, this was their education pilot initiative employees could register for a higher learning programs on their first day through thirty offered learning partners and the subjects ranged from marketing and tax to other studies. They also had committed to partially funding another hundred and fifty additional degree programs. Dali Parton also was a force in giving toward child care. So Dali Wood announced an unparalleled benefit for hosts working at the Smoky Mountains theme park. They had a partnership with WeCare which was the largest child care network in the US and host at all Dali Wood Parks and Resorts could find licensed child care providers offering flexible schedules for newborns through school-aged kids. And the Dali Wood company was paying a portion of child care costs for people who enrolled. Millions of Americans are apparently continuing to voluntarily pay way too much for their cell phone service and the experts remain baffled. The technology to switch providers exists. You can be done right from your home. There's no law that requires you to remain loyal to that wireless company you've complained about for the

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8:1925th year, but even before we opened in 86, I had the dream to build an area there that would provide jobs for the people of La La La Home. We're relatives as well as friends in that area. And people were needing a lot of work. And so, Ollywood has really been great to do that. It's a really healthy economy to grow and then, well, part of the country, certainly they're in Pigeon forge in that mountain area. They have where my own folks are and where I grew up. Number three, she came to the rescue in natural disasters. When it came to natural disasters, obviously, Dolly Parton gave an enormous amount of charity there as well. She donated $12 million to families after the great Smoky Mountains wildfires. With all that money, Parton was able to give the families a thousand dollars a month for the first five months as promised. On the sixth and final month, they surprised each family with five grand. Each family collected a total of $10,000 through Dolly Parton's efforts. After Hurricane Helene cut a swath of devastation across the southeast, Dolly Parton personally donated a million bucks to the Mountain Ways Foundation to support flood victims as well. And her businesses in Dollywood Foundation gave another million.

9:21Number four, Bald Eagle Sanctuary because Marca. She also was very fond of Bald Eagles, so at her theme park, Dollywood. She opened a special attraction, a 30,000-square-foot aviary to house rehabilitated Bald Eagles that could not be released back into the wild. She had a long time collaboration with the American Eagle Foundation and opened the Eagle Mountain Sanctuary at the park. And number five, she did a lot of medical philanthropy. When it came to healthcare, Dolly Parton gave a million bucks to Vanderbilt to support work on infectious diseases in children and she created an endowment to support additional research. She did benefit concerts for the Dollywood Foundation for a new hospital in Severe County. So that's an awful lot of charity. And again, she had a lot of money to give to charity, but she also gave up her time. And again, this is the beautiful thing about charity. Charity builds communities. Well, there actually tends to undermine communities. Charity builds it. And Dolly Parton, there's a reason she was universally beloved. I can see that one is only poor only if they choose to be.

10:25Though we had no money, I was rich as I could be. And my coat of many colors, my mama made for me. Thank you.